When Stan Getz plays his tenor saxophone, he awakens in you the same feeling of relaxation you get from a tropical breeze or a hot shower. His high, smooth tone instantly soothes your soul and clears your head. A stark and forever-puzzling contrast with Getz's erratic and sometimes cruel personality that left most musicians and singers shocked and disgusted. It's hard to understand how the two personalities could exist in one artist, but they did. [Photo above of Stan Getz, courtesy of IMDB]
At any rate, here are eight relatively new YouTube videos of Getz performances. One of them I discovered while watching a French film over the holidays, so I think of it as new:
Here's Stan Getz playing Desafinado with Mike Pyne (p), Ron Mathewson (b) and Spike Wells (d) in Denmark in 1970...
Here's Getz playing Wave in Copenhagen in 1970...
Here's Getz playing Lush Life with Chick Corea (p), Stanley Clarke (b) and Tony Williams (d) in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1972...
Here's Getz in London playing Desafinado and Chega De Saudade (No More Blues) with his quartet on The Shirley Bassey Show in the summer of 1976...
Here's Getz playing during the opening credits of the French film Mort d'Un Pourri (Death of Corrupt Man), in 1977, directed by Georges Lautner with music by Philippe Sarde...
Here's Getz with Chet Baker playing Line for Lyons in Stockholm in 1983...
Here's Getz playing But Beautiful, with pianist Kenny Barron (p), Yasuhito Mori (b) and Ben Riley (d) at the Umbria Jazz Festival in Perugia, Italy, in 1989...
And here's Getz playing Kenny Barron's composition Voyage, with Barron (p), Alex Blake (b) and Terri Lyne Carrington (d) in Vienne, France, in July 1990...