Paul McCandless Live at Kimballs East 1992
I attended this concert back in 1992. It was an amazing evening. The lineup says it all: Paul McCandless -reeds, Lyle Mays – piano, Steve Rodby – bass, Mark Walker – drums, and Fred Simon – keyboards.
The album they were touring was Premonition, one of McCandless’s best. It was a night which has always stayed in memory, but I honestly never thought I’d get to hear a recording of it, much less 34 years later. Here’s the promo material which gives some background on how this came about:
For more than half a century, multi-instrumentalist Paul McCandlesshas been a singular force in creative music, thrilling audiences with a career that bridges jazz, classical, and global traditions. His journey began in the late 1960s with saxophonist and world music pioneer Paul Winter in the groundbreaking Winter Consort, followed in the early 1970s by the formation of the influential chamber jazz quartet Oregon. By the early 1980s, McCandless was also a key voice in Jaco Pastorius’ legendary Word of Mouth big band, further cementing his place in modern jazz history.
McCandless emerged as a bandleader in 1979 with All the Mornings Bring on Elektra, then joined forces with pianist Art Lande and vibraphonist Dave Samuels for the striking ECM release Skylight in 1981. That same year he released Navigator on the Landslide label, continuing to expand his compositional voice. Two major projects followed on Windham Hill: Hearsay (1988) and Premonition (1992), the latter produced by bassist Steve Rodby and featuring an extraordinary lineup of Lyle Mays on piano, Fred Simon on keyboards, and Mark Walker on drums.
That ensemble took to the stage for nine concerts in the summer of 1992, beginning on July 4 at the Montreal Jazz Festival and continuing with a three-night stand from August 21 to 23 at Kimball’s East in the San Francisco Bay Area. One of those performances was quietly captured on a DAT cassette and placed into McCandless’ private archive, where it remained unheard for decades. The tape resurfaced only recently, discovered by co-producer Jon Krosnick while helping McCandless organize material for his website. As Krosnick recalls, after finding a poorly labeled cassette tucked away in a small storage room, he took it home, pressed play, and instantly knew its importance. “We have to release this,” he thought.
Now, thanks to the meticulous sound engineering of Steve Rodby and Dan Feiszli—employing state-of-the-art, AI-assisted mixing technology—that long-forgotten recording has been transformed into Live at Kimball’s East, a professional and vivid document of a band at its creative peak. The release captures the group’s extraordinary onstage chemistry and restores a moment in time that might otherwise have been lost.
For Rodby, the project is deeply personal. Revisiting the music also means revisiting memories, especially of pianist Lyle Mays, whose passing in 2020 left a profound void in the jazz world. A founding member of the Pat Metheny Group and Metheny’s longtime songwriting partner, Mays shared a special musical bond with McCandless—one already evident on Premonition and even more striking on these live performances. On Live at Kimball’s East, that connection unfolds with added intensity and emotional depth, making the release both a celebration and a poignant tribute.
Live at Kimball’s East stands as a rare and powerful addition to Paul McCandless’ remarkable legacy: a rediscovered chapter that reminds us how enduring, and how alive, this music continues to be.
Note that the album is available for preorder and will be released on February 27th (My birthday!) I got to hear a bit of it and it sounds really good.
7 Kommentare
Michael Engelbrecht
Wonderful, Brian, a perfect contender for our ARCHIVE column in March – and insightful lines that trigger my curiosity to become a member of this 1992 audiencé in my „electric cave“.
You have been at sooooo many concerts in your life…ö i would like to read a list of all of them. For example, you were part of the enthusiastic audience of those famous evenings of The Allman Bros. at Fillmore East. Maybe in another year and another place, you crossed ways – without knowing – with Lajla on a Grateful Dead evening😉
In the days after Ralph Towner’s passing I returned to early Oregon with Paul, Colin, and Glen, „Distant Hills“ being one of them – a revelation for me as a teenager. Still a deep dive!
Brian Whistler
It would take me quite a while to think of all the concerts I’ve attended in my life. But I could name some that turned into albums, and there are not that many:
the aforementioned Allman Brothers album at the Fillmore
Oregon live at Yoshi’s – an album with the classic lineup except of course Colin, who had passed in 1987, so it was Mark Walker on drums.
Carmen McRae Sings Monk at the Great American Music Hall – she was in a nasty mood that night because she conscious of the fact this was being recorded, and the guys didn’t rehearse enough. She really railed of a young pianst. Even with Charlie Rouse, who had played with Monk for years, it was a difficult concert to attend, because she was more concerned with getting it on tape, than entertaining the audience. She stopped and started again many times and made the audience very uncomfortable. She never did get the whole album on tape and had to supplement it with studio performances.
Fred Hersch with Anat Cohen at the Healdsburg Jazz Festival. And that might be it.
I also saw Keith Jarrett solo at the SF Opera House, which we were told was being recorded for an album. The music that night was amazing, short pieces which really captured my attention and my heart. Perhaps Keith was having a particularly bad night because he kept coming up to the mic and asking the audience to stop coughing, not once but quite often. Of course this happened almost every time I saw him play solo, with maybe one or two exceptions, but this particular night was memorable because he literally had a total meltdown and so did the audience. At a certain point people started yelling back at him to sit back down and play. Somebody yelled „what if someone has a cold?“ „Shut up and play!“ Keith, when he realized he had lost the audience. Right then a baby started crying. I asked myself, „who the hell brings a baby to a Keith Jarrett concert!?“ pandemonium broke out. People were shouting at Keith and at each other. It was crazy.Finally, Keith came up to the microphone and said „All righ you guys, what do you want to hear me play?“ People started shouting out names of standards, Keith’s own tunes, etc. and amazingly, the guy played every one of them. Pretty soon he had the audience in the palm of his hand. He was playing beautifully that evening. By the end of the concert, he had not only turned it around, he gave five or six encores. I have wondered if that concert is sitting in the ECM archives, waiting to be discovered. Because despite the drama of that evening, which was well documented in a San Francisco Chronicle review, it was an extraordinary night of music making!
flowworker
Oh my god, there should be a film of the whole evening. Totally surreal changes all along the way. What a documentary that would be! (m.e.)
Brian Whistler
Well, I doubt it was filmed, but I have little doubt that all of it was recorded, even if they didn’t decide to use any of it. All I know is, it was probably the best solo concert I ever saw him give, despite the drama and near riot that broke out at one point.
Anonym
You remember month and year of the SF concert?
A baby crying in a Jarrett solo concert sounds like a well planned act of sabotage 😉
By the way I was in the audience when Jarrett‘ trio Tiribute was recorded. In Cologne.
Lajla
Thanks Brian. Wonderful written as usual. Maybe we met in the bay area once. I lived there in 1980 in Haight Ashbury. Mayte we met at the concert of Jimmie Dale Gilmore in Portland. The atmosphere was just as tense as you described of the Keith concert. Jimmie came a little bit late on stage and started talking about his life in Big Sur. People shouted: Stop Talking, start playing. I was afraid he would leave the concert because of all these Bad vibes. I was quite shocked of the aggresdions in the air. Finally Jimmie started singing: your just a wave not the water.
Perfect answer for the rude audience.
Brian Whistler
That Jarrett concert was March 2010. I couldn’t find the chronicle review, but here’s a fabulous true life review from the mercury news. Read it and weep or laugh, depending on how much coffee (or drug of choice) you’ve imbibed:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2010/03/20/review-keith-jarrett-keyboard-genius-puts-on-extended-solo-concert-temper-tantrum/