| Jazz |
Stan Getz’s Moments in Time: A Rediscovered Gem That Captures the Saxophonist at His Freest.
This September, Bayou Blue Radio will bring listeners something rare: not just a record, but a time capsule. Resonance Records is preparing to unveil Moments in Time, a live album by the Stan Getz Quartet that transports us back to 1976 and the legendary Keystone Korner in San Francisco. What emerges is not simply another entry in the Getz discography, but a breathtaking document of a band in full flight, a portrait of a master saxophonist at his most liberated, supported by a group that matched him stride for stride.
The release is more than an album. It is a carefully curated historical package, complete with a 28-page booklet featuring essays by critics, family members, fellow musicians, and producers. Ted Panken, Steve Getz, pianist Joanne Brackeen, drummer Billy Hart, and producers Zev Feldman and Todd Barkan all contribute reflections, alongside a trove of rare, previously unpublished photographs. Japanese artist Takao Fujioka provides the striking cover art, underscoring the thoughtfulness of the presentation. The project comes with the blessing of the Stan Getz estate, lending it a weight of authenticity.
Panken captures the essence of the set when he describes it as an “ensemble of thirty masters in the making.” Barkan, the impresario behind the Keystone, recalls how Getz confided in him repeatedly: “I never felt so free, so supported, as I did with this group, Joanne Brackeen, Clint Houston, Billy Hart. They’re happy and free to follow me anywhere I go.” For Barkan, the Keystone was more than a venue; it was the one club in which Getz seemed completely at home.
That sense of ease is audible in every track. The quartet brims with energy, daring, and a sense of discovery. Listening to these recordings today, one cannot help but feel transported into the intimate space of the Keystone Korner, eyes closed, swept into applause with the audience. The quartet is not merely accompanying a star, they are co-conspirators in exploration. Brackeen, in her interview with Feldman, makes the point bluntly: “He had to be brave to hire us. He already had his thing. He didn’t need this group. And this group was crazy! We did everything we could. We weren’t there just to accompany.”
That boldness is felt especially on “O Grande Amor,” a Jobim standard closely tied to Getz’s career since the bossa nova boom of the early 1960s. Here, Getz’s phrasing glides with an ease that belies the technical precision underneath. What sounds like casual lyricism is, in fact, the result of deep craftsmanship—a lifetime spent honing a sound so natural that it feels like pure speech. The album also features Wayne Shorter’s “Infant Eyes,” Horace Silver’s “Peace,” Dizzy Gillespie’s “Con Alma,” and Jimmy Rowles’s “Morning Star.” Each piece was part of Getz’s personal canon, staples that he revisited often, but here, in 1976, they gain a freshness born of risk-taking and the camaraderie of his band.
For early adopters, digital pre-orders offer a taste: three tracks, “Summer Night,” “The Cry of the Wild Goose,” and “Peace”, are available instantly on iTunes. But the full album rewards immersion. It is best experienced as a whole, a document of a single moment in Getz’s restless, peripatetic journey.
The admiration that Getz inspired among his peers remains striking. Musicians who saw him live speak of an atmosphere that changed the moment he lifted his horn. There was something in his tone, warm, round, shimmering with melancholy, that silenced rooms and fixed attention. In conversation, his colleagues and fans alike inevitably refer to the “Stan Getz sound.” It was not just timbre, not merely technique; it was an identity. As Joshua Redman notes in his essay for the set: “His virtuosity, he could play any song, in any key, at any tempo, with mastery and a feeling of ease. And then there was his incredible storytelling, the natural, organic flow of his phrases and ideas.”
To understand Getz’s stature in the jazz pantheon, one must recall both his triumphs and his contradictions. Born in Philadelphia in 1927 and raised in the Bronx, Getz was a prodigy, playing with Jack Teagarden, Benny Goodman, and Woody Herman while still a teenager. He rose to fame in the late 1940s as part of Herman’s “Four Brothers” saxophone section, where his velvety tone distinguished him from his peers. In the 1950s, he became synonymous with a cool, lyrical style that stood apart from the fire-breathing bravado of bebop. By the 1960s, his embrace of Brazilian music catapulted him into international stardom: Jazz Samba (1962) with guitarist Luiz Bonfá introduced the bossa nova craze to American audiences, and Getz/Gilberto (1964), featuring Astrud Gilberto’s vocals on “The Girl from Ipanema,” remains one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time.
But Getz was restless. He was not content to remain the face of bossa nova; he pushed onward, searching for new contexts, new collaborators. By the mid-1970s, the jazz world was shifting. Fusion dominated, with Miles Davis and Weather Report embracing electric instruments and rock rhythms. Getz, though skeptical of such trends, found his own path—rooted in acoustic quartet interplay, but informed by the freedom and elasticity of modern jazz. That is the sound captured on Moments in Time: a group willing to stretch, to take chances, to redefine what a standard could be.
For Resonance Records, the release is part of an ongoing project of preservation. In recent years, the label has unearthed forgotten treasures by Bill Evans, Wes Montgomery, and other giants. But the Getz project feels especially poignant. Getz passed away in 1991 at age 64, leaving behind a vast discography but also a sense of unfinished exploration. Moments in Time fills part of that gap, not by offering closure, but by reminding us of the vitality he carried into every performance.
Three albums, then, stand as the essential Getz canon for today’s listeners. Getz/Gilberto, with its global reach and iconic status. Jazz Samba, the record that launched a movement. And now, Moments in Time, which captures Getz live, unfiltered, surrounded by equals. Together, they form a portrait of an artist who, though gone for more than three decades, remains alive in sound.
Listening today, one hears not just notes, but an era: the gentle insouciance of the 1970s, the haze of smoke-filled clubs, the communal energy of musicians who played not for posterity but for the night at hand. To put on Moments in Time is to step back into that world, to let the round, singing voice of Stan Getz remind us why he remains, for so many, not just a saxophonist but a poet of sound.
Thierry De Clemensat
Member at Jazz Journalists Association
USA correspondent for Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief – Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, September 2nd 2025
Follow PARIS-MOVE on X
::::::::::::::::::::::::
To buy this album
(Never-before-released music recorded in 1976 at San Francisco’s Keystone Korner)
Musicians:
Stan Getz- Tenor sax
Joanne Brackeen- piano
Clint Houston- bass
Billy Hart- drums
Track Listing:
1. Summer Night (9:18)
2. O Grande Amore (6:50)
3. Infant Eyes (7:45)
4. The Cry of the Wild Goose (8:23)
5. Peace (5:06)
6. Con Alma (12:36)
7. Prelude To A Kiss (5:42)
8. Morning Star (8:42)
Booklet includes essays by Ted Panken, Steve Getz, Joanne Brackeen (pianist), Billy Hart (drummer), and producers Zev Feldman & Todd Barkan
28-page booklet includes rare unpublished photographs
Cover art by Japanese artist Takao Fujioka
Release endorsed by the Stan Getz Estate