Jimmy Heath Love Letter LP

Stereophile: Performance 4.5/5 Stars / Sonics 4.5/5 Stars

Michael Fremer Rated 10/11 Music, 9/11 Sonics!

TAS Rated 5/5 Music, 4/5 Sonics in the December 2020 Issue of The Absolute Sound!

Love Letter is the legendary saxophonist Jimmy Heath's stunningly elegant last testament, a take on seminal ballads. Includes songs written by Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie and Kenny Dorham in addition to original material. Partially recorded in New York in the days preceding his 93rd birthday, Jimmy presided over a brilliant cast of colleagues and friends. The result is pure Heath: polished, inventive, candid, beautiful. Guest artists include Wynton Marsalis, Gregory Porter and more.

Love Letter was recorded just a few months - some tracks a few weeks - before Jimmy Heath died in January at age 93, but this is no wisp of nostalgia. It's a full-blooded tour de force, an inventive excursion through a suite of originals and standards by a veteran saxophonist and composer who sounds barely a hair past his prime... This is his first album of ballads, and it's gorgeous. He blows with a dark, clean tone, swaying rhythms, and improvisational zest. His stellar rhythm section and starry guests don't bid a sentimental farewell but play in top form, which Heath matches. Worth the price of admission is Cecile McLorin Salvant covering 'Left Alone,' Mal Waldron's song for Billie Holiday, and there is no version more shiveringly graceful... The 24/96 download and, still more, the LP, exude a thrilling presence and a sumptuous warmth.

You'll immediately fall in love with this album and be so glad you attended the vinyl concert... Jimmy Heath is in full control. His ideas and execution remain exquisite throughout. We are lucky to have this document. And none too soon. He was gone two months following the second recording date. The sonics are as good as the music. Analog-digital, I really don't care as much about the storage medium as I do about the final result. I played the files for weeks before the record arrived and whatever Ryan K. Smith did with the digital files, he's mastered a great sounding record from a wonderfully produced and recorded pair of sessions. Nicely gate-fold packaged too. You'll play this one repeatedly and have trouble removing it from your turntable. Play on Jimmy Heath!

The swan song from 93-year-old tenor saxophonist Jimmy Heath is as gently seductive and meditative as Ballads by his fellow Philly tenor player, John Coltrane, though a tad more misty-eyed... Indeed, this music is for broken hearts and a good long cry. A posthumous release, Love Letter is an elegant but bittersweet final statement from the NEA Jazz Master.