Aranjuez

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David S

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Ok, I admit that when I first bought the album Rise, I was intrigued by two things: the tune Aranjuez and the credits, which noted "clappers".

Aranjuez has always been one of my favourite tunes of Mr Alpert's solo work, even to this day. I was reminded of it in listening to the Milos Karadaglic recording of the full Concierto de Aranjuez with the London Philharmonic with Yannick Nezet-Seguin (music director of my hometown Philadelphia Orchestra) conducting. It's terrific and I highly recommend it.

Of course, it brought me back to Mr. Alpert's version, which I've played a few times in the past few days. I used to think (before I got educated, lol) that everyone was ripping off Mr Alpert... I still love the version on Rise. In many ways, it's my favourite track on the "record", eclipsing Rise, in no small reason because of those "clappers"... When I saw Mr. Alpert at his performance at Lincoln Center a few years ago, sitting at the tables literally in front of him and band (still don't know how I fell into those seats), I kept thinking that with his current small band, it would be interesting to hear a different take on Aranjuez, or even Rise (and I still think Save the Sunlight would be an excellent addition to their current repertoire). A slower take, perhaps... Hee pllayed a snippet of Rise that kind of hinted at what I had been thinking but didn't take it to fruition. I won't be able to see him on his current upcoming performances - I won't be in the cities they are scheduled to be in and they're not scheduled to be in the DFW area, where I reside now - so I hope he and his coterie think about this and try it out.

I used to quip to friends that an ambition of mine was to be a "clapper" in a Herb Alpert tune. (If Mr. Alpert's folks read this blog, consider this my application henceforth and I can provide my resume :)). It wasn't until I saw some of the video for the Rise album that I really realized what that credit meant, and frankly, I think it's as cool as his cool trumpet sound.

All best, David
 
I've always preferred the version on the flip side of the transparent 12" version of Rise. It omits the strings. I mentioned it to Herb one time and he said, "we put it on there so no one would play it on the air." Mentioning that the hand claps were great, he said with a smile, "yeah they were pretty cool."
 
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