Charlie Haden with Michael Brecker - American Dreams (1992)

Front Cover	Album Info
	Artist/Composer Charlie Haden with Michael Brecker Title American Dreams Length 75:10 Discs: 1 Tracks: 13 Format CD Packaging Jewel Case Label Verve Cat. Number 064096 Style General Jazz Rating Recorded maj 1992

Musicians	Credits
Charlie Haden bass Michael Brecker sax tenor Brad Mehldau piano Brian Blade drums Alan Broadbent 34-pieces orchestra	Producer Charlie Haden Producer Ruth Cameron Engineer Jay Newland

Track list

01 American Dreams 04:54 02 Travels 06:48 03 No Lonely Nights 05:20 04 It Might be you 04:57 05 Prism 05:23 06 America the beautiful 05:25 07 Nightfall 05:10 08 Ron's Place 07:32 09 Bittersweet 06:48 10 Young and Foolish 05:41 11 Bird Food 07:33 12 Sotto Voce 05:14 13 Love like ours 04:25

Notes

AMG Review (2 1/2): This overly long quartet-plus-strings session is Charlie Haden's paean to an ideal America, made during a time that was ripe for such reflections. The band, with Haden on bass, Michael Brecker on tenor, Brad Mehldau on piano, and Brian Blade on drums, is unassailably strong. But listeners could have lived without the ear-candy sheen provided by the 34-piece orchestra, arranged primarily by Alan Broadbent, with additional contributions from Jeremy Lubbock and Vince Mendoza. (Broadbent and Mendoza also penned charts for Jane Monheit's In the Sun, released two weeks earlier.) Aside from outright banalities like "America the Beautiful" and "It Might Be You" (yes, the Stephen Bishop lite-radio hit), there are some saving graces, like Keith Jarrett's "Prism" and "No Lonely Nights," Mehldau's "Ron's Place," and Haden's two originals, "American Dreams" and "Nightfall." But Pat Metheny's "Travels" goes soggy without its Midwestern guitar twang, and Ornette Coleman's "Bird Food," one of only three tracks not to feature the orchestra, is so wildly out of place that its impact is somehow diminished — notwithstanding a vivid pedal-point interlude about six minutes in. — David R. Adler