ANDREW HILL (Sextet) – Point Of Departure (LP-1964)

March 10, 2015, 11:42 am

≫ Next: DEXTER GORDON – One Flight Up (LP-1964)

≪ Previous: FRANK LOWE (Quintet) – The Flam (LP-1976)

$

0

0

Label: Blue Note – BLP 4167

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album  / Country: US / Released: 1964

Style: Post Bop, Free Improvisation

Recorded at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, March 21, 1964.

Design [Cover], Photography By [Cover Photo] – Reid Miles

Liner Notes – Nat Hentoff

Recorded By – Rudy Van Gelder

A1 - Refuge . . . . . . . . . . 12:18

A2 - New Monastery . . . . . . . . . . 7:05

B1 - Spectrum . . . . . . . . . . 9:48

B2 - Flight 19 . . . . . . . . . . 4:15

B3 - Dedication . . . . . . . . . . 6:45

Andrew Hill – piano, composed

Eric Dolphy – alto saxophone, flute, bass clarinet

Joe Henderson – tenor saxophone

Kenny Dorham – trumpet

Richard Davis – double bass

Anthony Williams – drums, percussion

Pianist and composer Andrew Hill is perhaps known more for this date than any other in his catalogue -- and with good reason. Hill's complex compositions straddled many lines in the early to mid-1960s and crossed over many. Point of Departure, with its all-star lineup (even then), took jazz and wrote a new book on it, excluding nothing. With Eric Dolphy and Joe Henderson on saxophones (Dolphy also played clarinet, bass clarinet, and flute), Richard Davis on bass, Tony Williams on drums, and Kenny Dorham on trumpet, this was a cast created for a jazz fire dance. From the opening moments of "Refuge," with its complex minor mode intro that moves headlong via Hill's large, open chords that flat sevenths, ninths, and even 11ths in their striding to move through the mode, into a wellspring of angular hard bop and minor-key blues. Hill's solo is first and it cooks along in the upper middle register, almost all right hand ministrations, creating with his left a virtual counterpoint for Davis and a skittering wash of notes for Williams. The horn solos in are all from the hard bop book, but Dolphy cuts his close to the bone with an edgy tone. "New Monastery," which some mistake for an avant-garde tune, is actually a rewrite of bop minimalism extended by a diminished minor mode and an intervallic sequence that, while clipped, moves very quickly. Dorham solos to connect the dots of the knotty frontline melody and, in his wake, leaves the space open for Dolphy, who blows edgy, blue, and true into the center, as Hill jumps to create a maelstrom by vamping with augmented and suspended chords. Hill chills it out with gorgeous legato phrasing and a left-hand ostinato that cuts through the murk in the harmony. When Henderson takes his break, he just glides into the chromatically elegant space created by Hill, and it's suddenly a new tune. This LP is full of moments like this. In Hill's compositional world, everything is up for grabs. It just has to be taken a piece at a time, and not by leaving your fingerprints all over everything. In "Dedication," where he takes the piano solo further out melodically than on the rest of the album combined, he does so gradually. You cannot remember his starting point, only that there has been a transformation. This is a stellar date, essential for any representative jazz collection, and a record that, in the 21st century, still points the way to the future for jazz.

_ Review by Thom Jurek

In 1964, the term avant-garde could have been applied to any number of different musical angles in jazz. The free experiments of John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, with their pure emotional howling set within very limited contextual framework, are perhaps the most notorious. But there was another avenue that retained a significant structural environment with greater emphasis on composition,even if those compositions were themselves quite a stretch. Hill's third recording as a leader, the diabolically brilliant Point of Departure, may be the apex of this school.

This album includes some of the fiercest, high density writing of the era, with each track featuring tight, byzantine written statements and full-throated blending of timbres. The music includes dissonant harmonies, often employing multiple melodic ideas, and often played very fast. It would be easy to imagine the musicians scratching their heads on the first run through, struggling with music that reached for new levels of complexity. Nevertheless, and despite the very complicated, wrought compositions, the band plays rather loosely. They're all there, but a perfect precision performance does not appear to have been Hill's core demand. Instead, people come in and out slightly ahead or behind the beats, and even when they're harmonizing, cacophonous filigrees abound.

On top of all that—and that's already a lot—Point of Departure features extraordinary improvising. Eric Dolphy—on alto sax, flute and his trademark bass clarinet—pursues pathways that make perfect sense within the music, but still sound like they've arrived from another planet. Joe Henderson's tenor work is right out there with Dolphy, and Kenny Dorham's trumpet adds a bright brass blare over all of it. Hill's piano is all over the map, and he plays the way he writes: inventive, unpredictable, and fearless. Notably, although the improvising is very aggressive and forward-looking, everyone still keeps his statements within the context of the music. Nothing on this record ever veers off into free territory...

A musical masterpiece.

(_ By Greg Simmons)

If you find it, buy this album!

---

DEXTER GORDON – One Flight Up (LP-1964)

March 10, 2015, 1:18 pm

≫ Next: FREDDIE HUBBARD – Here To Stay (1962, LP-1985)

≪ Previous: ANDREW HILL (Sextet) – Point Of Departure (LP-1964)

$

0

0

Label: Blue Note – BLP 4176

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: US / Released: 1964

Style: Contemporary Jazz, Improvisation

Recorded at the Barclay Studios, Paris, France, on June 2, 1964.

Design [Cover] – Reid Miles

Liner Notes – Leonard Feather

Producer, Photography By [Cover Photo] – Francis Wolff

Recorded By – Jacques Lubin

A  -  Tanya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18:22

         (by – Donald Byrd)

B1 - Coppin' The Haven . . . . . . . . .  11:18

         (by – Kenny Drew)

B2 - Darn That Dream . . . . . . . . . . . . 7:33

         (by – DeLange, Van Heusen)

Dexter Gordon – tenor saxophone

Donald Byrd – trumpet

Kenny Drew – piano

Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen – bass

Art Taylor – drums, percussion

Dexter Gordon is often cited as a major influence on John Coltrane. He was the first to take Charlie Parker's alto sax bebop breakthroughs and understand how to develop them for tenor. Not that he is aiming at the same transcendent themes as Coltrane but rather that his musical understanding is a spur to playing sax in a more open and responsive way than heard before.

This openness and invention is heard at its best on “One Flight Up”. The album is remarkable for a host of reasons. It was recorded in Paris (not New Jersey) by musicians who had established themselves outside of the United States. On its initial release on vinyl, a single 18 minute track (“Tanya”) took up the whole of the first side – this some two years before Bob Dylan’s “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” amazed the pop world by taking up a whole side of the album “Blonde on Blonde”. And “One Flight Up” marks the early and definitive appearance of one of the few European jazz players to make it on a truly international stage – bass player Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen, unsurprisingly known for short as NHOP.

Dexter had been successful with the 1963 Blue Note release “Our Man In Paris” (with Bud Powell (piano), Pierre Michelot (bass) and Kenny Clarke (drums), recorded at CBS studios Paris, as the title suggests. This in itself is often regarded as one of the great jazz albums in which Dexter’s style fully and freely emerges. Francis Wolff was keen to get more of Dexter’s output on disc and went to Paris to produce the “One Flight Up” sessions.

Leonard Feather’s original album liner notes for “One Flight Up” refer to a round table discussion for “Down Beat” in 1964 in which Dexter Gordon and Kenny Drew (who plays piano on the album) talk about the advantages of being expatriates. Dexter had left the US in 1962 to take up a permanent residency at the Montmatre Club in Copenhagen. There he had recruited NHOP (then aged just 16) as bass player in his trio. Kenny Drew had moved to Paris in 1960, staying on after a six week role in the play “The Connection”. Both point out the freedom that they were able to discover in playing jazz away from the pressures of being back home. The most obvious advantage was the absence of racism – still a major problem for African Americans in the 1960s, as we have pointed out in discussing John Coltrane’s music. Miles Davis had had a similar experience when he had lived for awhile in Paris in 1957, shortly after recording ‘Kind Of Blue”.

He was there to make the soundtrack of Louis Malle’s film noir “Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud (Lift To The Scaffold)”, joining the Left Bank artistic set (which included Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir) and, by all accounts, having an affair with movie actress Juliette Grecco. (All this is documented in the remarkable book by Boris Vian - "Manual of Saint Germain-Des-Pres"). Miles has remarked on the shock of being for the first time looked upon as a musician and a person about whom his race was not the most important thing. Seven years later, Dexter Gordon experienced the same freedom that could enter his music once that context of racism has been removed: “I felt that I could breathe, and just be more or less a human being, without being white or black….”

But there was a second aspect of the freedom of being in Europe that was equally important; working at the same location with continuity of employment in the same job (Dexter at the Montmatre, Drew with long residencies in Paris) created the space in which artistic expression could flower away from the constant pressure of touring at home. The music of “One Flight Up” fully reflects this newfound freedom.

Formally, this is expressed in the way the open, mainly modal, structures of “Tanya” and “Coppin’ The Haven” allow space for each musician to express himself, unhurried, untroubled by conventions of time and length, able to take just as much room as they wish to get their musical ideas over. The sound and feel is remarkably similar to that achieved on Miles’ “Kind of Blue”; the clarity of Donald Byrd’s trumpet and Dexter Gordon’s sax echoing Miles’ and John Coltrane’s earlier masterpiece.

“Tanya”, a Donald Byrd composition, is built around a heavy asymmetrical beat from Art Taylor and features two counterposed themes, the first modal and free flowing and the second more structured and conventional. The modal theme tends to stoke up tension, the more conventional theme serving as release, capturing that early ‘sixties jazz urban optimism. The overall feel is one of well-being, of being at peace and in harmony with whatever life brings.

As in Lee Morgan’s “The Sidewinder” there is the feeling that for all the lack of restriction on what each soloist will contribute, every note is somehow necessary and that though the piece is indeed 18 minutes long, that length is fully justified. “Coppin’ The Haven” (a Kenny Drew composition) is very similarly structured and executed except that the pace is quicker and the sense of well-being is infused with a sense of urgency. On both tracks the quintet is heard in full. “On Darn That Dream” (a Dexter Gordon composition that did not make it the original release) Donald Byrd is absent.

A key player here is Niels-Herring Orsted Pedersen. Indeed, following his death aged 58 in April 2005, the whole album could be taken not only as a fitting tribute to Dexter Gordon's legacy (he died in 1990) but also to NHOP's legacy. Barely 18 at the time of recording “One Flight Up”, NHOP already displays those hallmarks that would lead to his long and illustrious career in jazz, most notably his long membership of the Oscar Peterson Trio. As John Fordham notes in his obituary for "The Guardian", where most bass players pluck the strings with a single finger (or a single clump of fingers) NHOP has the strength and dexterity to pluck the strings with four fingers individually, much as a guitar player would pick the strings of that instrument. The result is a fluency and an ability to develop bass line runs with rapidity and complexity that is seldom heard on the instrument. This is heard to full effect on “Tanya” and “Coppin’ The Haven” where the bass forms almost a fourth solo instrument at the same time as it also takes up its rhythm duties. Indeed, so strong is the rhythm taken on by bass that Art Taylor’s drumming is freed up to launch into all sort of increasingly complex cross rhythms that build on the feeling of openness as the song progresses.

“Darn That Dream” is a more conventional take on the jazz standard, taken as a late night, after hours piece. Donald Byrd is absent; there is more opportunity for Dexter to show off his lyrical side and excellent sax technique. Richard Cook and Brian Morton note that this track in particular shows the influence of Dexter’s playing on John Coltrane’s harmonic development at this time.

Overall, this a great album, catching five fine musicians at a moment in their careers when the pressure was off and the barriers to creative expression had been lowered. Over fifty years later that discovery they found in this music still shines through.



If you find it, buy this album!

FREDDIE HUBBARD – Here To Stay (1962, LP-1985)

March 10, 2015, 4:23 pm

≫ Next: CHICK COREA – Is (LP-1969 / Solid State Records)

≪ Previous: DEXTER GORDON – One Flight Up (LP-1964)

$

0

0

Label: Blue Note – BST 84135

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: US / Released: 1985

Style: Hard Bop, Improvisation

Recorded on December 27, 1962 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

Design [Cover] – Reid Miles

Liner Notes – Peter Keepnews

Producer – Alfred Lion

Recorded By [Recording By] – Rudy Van Gelder

This album was scheduled for release as BST 84135 in 1963 but was never issued.

It first appeared as part of a Hubbard double album (BNLA 496-2) in 1976.

It is issued here for the first time with the original Reid Miles cover from 1963.

A1 - Philly Mignon . . . . . . . . . . 5:28

         (by – Freddie Hubbard)

A2 - Father And Son . . . . . . . . . . 6:34

         (by – Cal Massey)

A3 - Body And Soul . . . . . . . . . . 6:25

         (by – Heyman, Eyton, Green, Sour)

B1 - Nostrand And Fulton . . . . . . . . . . 7:07

         (by – Freddie Hubbard)

B2 - Full Moon And Empty Arms . . . . . . . . . . 5:25

         (by – Kaye, Mossman)

B3 - Assunta . . . . . . . . . . 7:05

        (by – Cal Massey)

Freddie Hubbard – trumpet

Wayne Shorter – tenor saxophone

Cedar Walton – piano

Reggie Workman – bass

Philly Joe Jones – drums, percussion

Scheduled for release in 1962 and then effectively shelved until 1986, “Here To Stay” is another of the seminal Blue Note albums that failed to see the light of day at the time of recording. Perhaps this reflects the difficult choices that Albert Lion had to make too often in order to keep a small independent record label afloat.

“Here To Stay” is a fine and early example of Freddie Hubbard, then aged only 24, as a fully formed imaginative voice in jazz. The band - Wayne Shorter (tenor saxophone); Cedar Walton (piano); Reggie Workman (bass); Philly Joe Jones (drums) – offers an ideal platform; all these musicians except Philly Joe Jones were working together at the time with Freddie Hubbard in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and the understanding they had developed shows. But it is Freddie Hubbard’s trumpet playing that really impresses; no wonder that his inventiveness on the instrument is still so admired today.

“Philly Mignon”, the opening track and a Freddie Hubbard composition is all about virtuoso trumpet licks, played fast, perhaps too fast. The other Freddie Hubbard composition on the album, “Nostrand And Fulton”, however is waltzy and fluid. “Father And Son”, the first of two Cal Massey compositions starts out as lightweight samba based bluesy ballad but then goes through interesting transitions, finally emerging as a loose-limbed good time feel blues. The second Cal Massey composition, “Assunta” has Wayne Shorter sounding very Coltrane-like and seems to be mainly a vehicle for him until Freddie Hubbard interjects with a characteristically fluent solo that changes the pace and direction. “Full Moon And Empty Arms” dates from 1946 and is based on a melody from the third movement of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor with words and arrangement by Buddy Kaye and Ted Mossman. It was recorded by Frank Sinatra and is not highly regarded. Freddie Hubbard and the band here go some way to rescuing it but without complete success.

The stand out track is a fine version of the standard “Body And Soul”. Comparison with Coleman Hawkins’ classic 1939 tenor sax version of the Johnny Green song or even with John Coltrane’s 1960 version on “Coltrane’s Sound” shows just how far Freddie Hubbard had come with a truly modern appreciation of the song and how to interpret it for trumpet.

“Here To Stay” is a very welcome addition to the Freddie Hubbard catalogue and is highly recommended.

If you find it, buy this album!

CHICK COREA – Is (LP-1969 / Solid State Records)

March 15, 2015, 10:40 am

≫ Next: MICHAEL MANTLER – No Answer (LP-1974)

≪ Previous: FREDDIE HUBBARD – Here To Stay (1962, LP-1985)

$

0

0

Label: Solid State Records – SS 18055

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: US / Released: 1969

Style: Free Jazz, Avant-garde Jazz

Recorded at Bell Sound, New York City on May 11/12, 1969.

Art Direction – Frank Gauna

Painting [Cover] – Hans Weingaertner

Mastered At – Bell Sound Studios

Producer – Sonny Lester

A  -  Is ...................................... 29:01

         (by – C. Corea)

B1 - Jamala .............................. 14:14

         (by – D. Holland)

B2 - This .................................... 8:18

         (by – C. Corea)

B3 - It ......................................... 0:28

         (by – C. Corea)

Chick Corea – piano, el. piano

Woody Shaw – trumpet

Bennie Maupin – tenor saxophone

Hubert Laws – piccolo flute

Dave Holland – double bass

Jack DeJohnette – drums

Horace Arnold – percussion

There is nothing better than hearing jazz legends as much younger men; hungry, talented and wanting to make their mark on the world. This album gives you all of that. Corea, Holland, DeJohnette and a very very fierce pre-Headhunters Bennie Maupin, then there are also surprisingly free Woody Shaw and Hubert Laws. Legends one and all.

Although the recording of Chick Corea’s “IS” sessions took place in May of 1969, the rhythm section, which consists of bassist Dave Holland, drummer Jack DeJohnette, and legendary Latin/hard-bop/fusion pianist Chick Corea, found its footing seven months earlier in the electric tone poems of the In A Silent Way sessions under Miles Davis’s leadership.

The “IS” sessions, is a great LP released on Solid State Records, which is a musical example of the exploratory sound of 1969. On IS, Corea, Holland, and DeJohnette largely break into the “new thing” or avant-garde with the help of hard bop players Woody Shaw and Bennie Maupin, flutist Hebert Laws, and percussionist Horace Arnold.

Records begins with “Is” is a 28 minutes of free association, a free jazz opus which symbolizes the experimental attitude that was present in American music and society in the late ’60s.

“Jamala” introduces the free-form style with which begins the second side of the album. The piece, composed by Holland, is over fourteen minutes of avant-garde ramblings, unstated tempos, and dissonant piano chord changes.

“This” breaks into free jazz territory, with Maupin dodging in and out of Corea’s lines on electric piano. It’s not suprising that Corea’s soloing on “This” has the seemingly chaotic but controlled intonations of Herbie Hancock considering they both played in Miles Davis’s free bop quintet on Filles De Kilimanjaro. Over five minutes of “This” is dedicated to showing off the simultaneous improvisation between Holland and Corea.

“It,” a 28 second classical duet between flutist Laws and Corea that is based on an original Corea composition called “Trio for Flute, Bassoon, and Piano.”

This music is 46 years old now. Just realize what has happened during this time in contemporary music - jazz or "classical": The borderline has completely vanished. Listen to 21st century contemporary music ("classical") - it sounds like Chick Corea in 1969.

If you find it, buy this album!

MICHAEL MANTLER – No Answer (LP-1974)

March 17, 2015, 4:37 pm

≫ Next: SAM RIVERS and DAVE HOLLAND – Vol. 2 (LP-1976)

≪ Previous: CHICK COREA – Is (LP-1969 / Solid State Records)

$

0

0

Label: WATT Works ‎– WATT/ 2, Virgin – WATT/ 2

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: UK / Released: 1974

Style: Contemporary Jazz

Recorded and Mixed At Blue Rock Studio, 1974.

Design – Paul McDonough

Engineer – Eddie Korvin, Frank Owen

Engineer [Assistant] – Richard Elen

Mixed By – Eddie Korvin

Photography By – Gregory Reeve, Jerry Bauer, Valerie Wilmer

Producer – Michael Mantler

       Number Six

A1 - Part One . . . . . . . . . . 4:55

A2 - Part Two . . . . . . . . . . 4:50

A3 - Part Three . . . . . . . . . 5:45

A4 - Part Four . . . . . . . . . . 2:05

        Number Twelve

B1 - Part One . . . . . . . . . . 7:35

B2 - Part Two . . . . . . . . . . 4:05

B3 - Part Three . . . . . . . . . 2:00

B4 - Part Four . . . . . . . . . . 2:55

Composed By – Michael Mantler

Words By – Samuel Beckett From "How It Is", 1964

Carla Bley – piano, organ, clavinet

Don Cherry – trumpet

Jack Bruce – voice, bass

A Beckett-like "Endgame" atmosphere, a feeling of hopelessness, pervades the work ... a very demanding, exceptionally intelligent production ....

No Answer marks the recorded beginning of Michael Mantler's fascination with the texts of Samuel Beckett as well as a long association with former Cream vocalist/bassist Jack Bruce. Here, with the spare instrumentation of voice, electric bass, keyboards, and trumpet (the late, great Don Cherry in outstanding form), he sets words from How It Is to accompaniment that ranges in style from bleak and spacy to almost funky. Bruce, with his high, plaintive voice, does a superb job here, investing the cynical, bitter text (example: "and the mud yes the dark yes the mud and the dark are true yes nothing to regret there no") with conviction and the right inflection of sorrow. On a couple of pieces, his bass kicks in for a momentary groove that sounds as though it was recalled from the type of Cream session that produced "I'm So Glad," but Mantler doesn't allow such relief to continue for long, antithetical as it would be to the Beckettian world he's conjuring. The songs aren't structured as pop pieces, however; they owe more to contemporary art songs despite the instrumentation, making the affair challenging to the listener expecting a rockish album but relatively easy compared to his earlier work with the Jazz Composer's Orchestra. The contributions by Cherry and Mantler's then-wife, Carla Bley, are crucial to the success of the album, each playing in a stark style that befits the matters at hand. No Answer is an unusually fine melding of theatrical text and music and one of Mantler's best efforts in this genre. Recommended.

FROM THE TEXTS

hard to believe too yes that I have a voice

yes in me yes when the panting stops yes

not at other times no and that I murmur yes

I yes in the dark yes in the mud yes for

nothing yes I yes but it must be believed yes

and the mud yes the dark yes the mud and

the dark are true yes nothing to regret there no   

...................

so things may change no answer end

no answer I may choke no answer sink

no answer sully the mud no more no answer

the dark no answer trouble the peace no

more no answer the silence no answer die

no answer DIE screams I MAY DIE screams

I SHALL DIE screams good

Instrumentation is sparse and somber, occasionally heavy on Bley's organ drone. Cherry's presence is comparatively brief, but he's his usual compelling, challenging self, the most distinctive trumpet voice around. Bley and Bruce carry the weight with virtuoso performances. ... This is music of great strength, created by a master composer who needs to be heard. Mantler's music demands the support of open, intelligent ears everywhere.

- DOWN BEAT

"No Answer" was a bold step into new territory. Jack Bruce, bassist/vocalist from rock group Cream, had proven himself much more than a pop singer on the epic "Escalator Over The Hill", Carla Bley's "chronotransduction", produced by Mantler between 1968 and 1971. On "No Answer" Bruce was given Samuel Beckett's tense/intense texts from "How It Is" to sing, Beckett is celebrated by some commentators for his grim humour. This, however, was never his appeal for Mantler: "I don't care for what people see as the satirical side of Beckett. I don't like the way the plays are produced, for instance. I like to see Beckett's work on a page, printed almost graphically - as a series of events. True, 'Watt' itself is a very funny book, but I never considered putting it to music. I was always so much attracted by the dark side, that was always enough. Enough material for a long time, to stay with that."

Bruce's voice, multi-tracked, soars and dives through Beckett's blackest moods, tellingly set by Mantler. An extraordinary performance. There is also intense keyboard work from Carla Bley, without a trace of the whimsy cultivated in later years, and bubbling, speeding trumpet work from the late, great Don Cherry.

If you find it, buy this album!

SAM RIVERS and DAVE HOLLAND – Vol. 2 (LP-1976)

March 24, 2015, 5:43 am

≫ Next: PHIL WOODS QUARTET – New Music By The New Phil Woods Quartet (LP-1974)

≪ Previous: MICHAEL MANTLER – No Answer (LP-1974)

$

0

0

Label: Improvising Artists Inc. – IAI 373.848

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: US / Released: 1977

Style: Avant-garde Jazz, Free Improvisation

Recorded at Big Apple Studio, New York City, February 18, 1976.

Painting [Jacket Cover Drawing] – David Garland

Photography By [Jacket Liner] – Carol Goss

Producer – Paul Bley

Recorded By, Mixed By – David Baker

A - Ripples ............................................................. 23:49

bass – Dave Holland / flute, composed by – Sam Rivers

B – Deluge .............................................................. 23:23

bass – Dave Holland / piano, composed by – Sam Rivers

Sam Rivers / Dave Holland Vol. 2 is an album by American jazz saxophonist Sam Rivers and English double-bassist Dave Holland featuring performances recorded in 1976 and released on the Improvising Artists label. Not Easy Listening, but unique and beautiful music, and as with Volume I, excellently formed.

...In a significant discography now approaching forty titles as a leader across five decades, "Contrasts" stands out as the only recording that left-of-center saxophonist/flautist Sam Rivers led for ECM. Originally released in 1980 on vinyl.

Rivers made his ECM debut on Dave Holland's classic 1973 ECM recording, "Conference of the Birds". In the years between these two recordings, the pair continued to work together in a number of formats, most notably as the duo responsible for Sam Rivers/Dave Holland Vol. 1 (I.A.I., 1976) and Vol. 2 (I.A.I., 1977), and in a trio with drummer Barry Altschul on "Sizzle" (Impulse!, 1976) and "Paragon" (Fluid, 1977). But it was with "Waves" (Tomato, 1979), that the seeds of "Contrasts" were born, as Rivers and Holland were joined by drummer/percussionist Thurman Barker, a similarly avant-reaching member of Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM)...

...When Sam Rivers met up with bassist Dave Holland for a set of duets, he decided to record two LPs and play a different instrument on each of the sidelong pieces. While Rivers performs on tenor and soprano during the first volume, the second recording finds him playing "Ripples" on flute and switching to piano for "Deluge"; both performances are over 23 minutes long. Since tenor is easily Rivers's strongest ax, this set is something different, equally successful and very intriguing. The flute piece has several different sections that keep both the musicians and listeners interested, while Rivers's piano feature is quite intense...

Hey, that's Sam & Dave, isn't it?

Enjoy!

If you find it, buy this album!

PHIL WOODS QUARTET – New Music By The New Phil Woods Quartet (LP-1974)

March 24, 2015, 5:46 am

≫ Next: DAVE HOLLAND / SAM RIVERS – Dave Holland and Sam Rivers, Vol. 1 (LP-1976)

≪ Previous: SAM RIVERS and DAVE HOLLAND – Vol. 2 (LP-1976)

$

0

0

Label: Testament Records – T-4402

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: US / Released: 1974

Style: Contemporary Jazz, Fusion

Recorded and Mastered At Artisan Sound Recorders, TR&M, 1974.

Mastered By [Tape-To-Disc Mastering] – Bob McLeod

Producer, Recorded By – Pete Robinson

Transferred By [Tape Transfer], Edited By – Pete Robinson, Pete Welding

A1 - Charity ........................................................................... 10:24

         (by – Pete Robinson)

A2 - Cumulus ........................................................................ 10:27

         (by – Pete Robinson)

B1 - Nefertiti And Riot .......................................................... 17:06

         (by [Nefertiti] – W. Shorter / by [Riot] – H. Hancock)

B2 - Yesterdays ....................................................................... 3:57

         (by – J. Kern, O. Harbach)

Phil Woods – saxophone

Pete Robinson – keyboards, synthesizer

Henry Franklin – bass

Brian Moffat – drums, percussion

This LP finds Woods playing in a very modern fusion-y mode than we are used to hearing from him.  With Pete Robinson on keys/synths,  Henry Franklin on bass, and Brian Moffatt on percussion.  Definitely one of his more out recordings.

When Phil Woods returned to the United States after several years in Europe, he formed a quartet with keyboardist Pete Robinson, bassist Henry Franklin and drummer Brian Moffatt that utilized electronics. Ten months of rehearsal resulted in four nights at a club and then little else before the band broke up. This LP, recorded at rehearsals in 1973, was the group's only album. On a pair of Robinson's challenging originals, the standard "Yesterdays" and a medley of Wayne Shorter's "Nefertiti" and Herbie Hancock's "Riot," Woods and Robinson challenge each other. However, the electronics, surprisingly, do sound a pretty good, and the band was only in what should have been the early stages of its development; it sometimes sounds a bit strangely and never really had a chance to mature.

Eh, that was more time and understanding ... who knows? ...

If you find it, buy this album!

DAVE HOLLAND / SAM RIVERS – Dave Holland and Sam Rivers, Vol. 1 (LP-1976)

March 26, 2015, 12:59 pm

≫ Next: GIORGIO GASLINI SESTETTO – Graffiti (2LP-1978)

≪ Previous: PHIL WOODS QUARTET – New Music By The New Phil Woods Quartet (LP-1974)

$

0

0

Label: Improvising Artists Inc. – IAI 373843

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: US / Released: 1976

Style: Avant-garde Jazz, Free Improvisation

Recorded at Big Apple Studio, New York City, February 18, 1976.

Artwork [Jacket], Photography By – Carol Goss

Composed By – Sam Rivers

Producer – Paul Bley

Recorded By, Mixed By – David Baker

A - Waterfall  ........................................................ 17:10

bass – Dave Holland / soprano saxophone – Sam Rivers

B - Cascade  .......................................................... 21:20

bass – Dave Holland / tenor saxophone – Sam Rivers

Intimate improvisational music played with absolute mastery by the incredible Sam Rivers (saxophonist/flutist/composer) and a great virtuoso of the double bass Dave Holland. A profound musical journey - but also just a dialogue between friends. Essential.

The first of two LPs that bring back a daylong duet session by Sam Rivers and bassist Dave Holland consists of two lengthy improvisations featuring Rivers on soprano and tenor; volume two features him playing flute and piano. Rivers' adventurous solos and interplay with the virtuosic Holland make this record of interest to listeners with open ears toward the avant-garde, despite the LP-length playing time.

Please be aware that this music will not immediately mandate foot tapping. Nor was it intended to, at least not during the first listen. It IS the combination of two legendary musicians providing wholly improvised, extended duo performances that never weaken with time. This music was recorded in 1976, and is still fresh. It does not fall into the traps of, I am sorry to say standard, so-called free form music, with its inability to focus. Rather, this musical set brings the listener to and through distinctly formed stream of consciousness improvisations with Sam Rivers playing and soprano then tenor saxes, underpinned by Dave Holland on bass. This, along with Volume two of this collaboration, should be a part of anyone's collection who appreciates interactive music which develops musical forms with structure and clarity; music that never fades.

If you find it, buy this album!

---

GIORGIO GASLINI SESTETTO – Graffiti (2LP-1978)

March 29, 2015, 2:46 pm

≫ Next: MASABUMI KIKUCHI – East Wind (LP-1974)

≪ Previous: DAVE HOLLAND / SAM RIVERS – Dave Holland and Sam Rivers, Vol. 1 (LP-1976)

$

0

0

Label: Dischi Della Quercia – 2Q 28005

Format: 2 × Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: Italy / Released: 1978

Style: Free Jazz, Contemporary Jazz, Free Improvisation, Avant-garde

Recorded at: Live al Teatro Lirico di Milano il 22 novembre 1977.

Engineer: Giuseppe Setaro

Cover Photos: Paola Mattioli

Sextett Photo: Laura Rizzi

G r a f f i t i

A1 - Black Out ........................................ 9:54

A2 - Soul Street ....................................... 7:58

B1 - Ballo Popolare Sui Navigli .............. 5:42

B2 - Black Night, Black Light ............... 12:25

C1 – Tastiere .......................................... 12:05

C2 - Mexico City Free ............................. 9:22

            -

D1 - Alle Fonti Del Jazz .......................... 8:15

D2 - La Ballata Del Pover Luisin ............ 8:47

Giorgio Gaslini – piano, electric piano, spinetta

Gianni Bedori – tenore and soprano sax

Gianluigi Trovesi – alto and soprano sax, bass clarinet

Paolo Damiani – double-bass

Gianni Cazzola – drums

Luis Agudo – percussions

In 1960 Gaslini wrote and recorded the music for Michelangelo Antonioni’s masterpiece La Notte. Five years later he made a record called Nuovi Sentimenti (New Feelings), with a band including Don Cherry, Steve Lacy, Gato Barbieri, two bassists and two drummers: an early example of a European musician embracing the avant garde. Since then he has written and recorded music in just about every conceivable format, from solos and duos through a regular quartet that featured the fine Italian tenorist Gianni Bedori, to quintets, sextets, septets, octets and many kinds of  large ensemble; he has composed jazz pieces for his own big band and the Italian Instabile Orchestra, symphonies, choral pieces, ballet scores, and an opera called Colloquio per Malcolm X.

 Giorgio Gaslini

 Gianluigi Trovesi

...However, the most fully realised music is contained on the two albums devoted to a sextet he led in the late ’70s, with Bedori on tenor and soprano saxes, Gianluigi Trovesi on alto and soprano sax and bass clarinet, Paolo Damiani on double bass, Gianni Cazzola on drums and Luis Agudo on percussion. The first of them, dating from 1977, is called Free Actions and sounds today as fresh and compelling as any post-Coltrane jazz that was being played anywhere in the world at the time. Better than that: anyone listening to the brilliantly imaginative solos of Bedori and  Trovesi against an active, hard-swinging ostinato figure during the fifth and final movement of the suite from which the album takes its name might well find themselves thinking of the current Wayne Shorter Quartet, and concluding that the Italians are not shamed by such an exalted comparison, even though they were making their music almost three and a half decades ago.

The second sextet album, Graffiti, was recorded live in Milan the following year and is equally as good. Again it’s a suite, and one of the movements — called “Soul Street” — brilliantly captures the spirit of the Charles Mingus of East Coasting and Jazz Portraits. It’s also in this track that Gaslini’s piano solo demonstrates how well he can blend the free with the funky. Once again Bedori and Trovesi are outstanding throughout, while Damiani’s sinewy bass lines remind me of his British contemporary, the late, lamented Jeff Clyne...

My favorite album for this month. Enjoy!

If you find it, buy this album!

MASABUMI KIKUCHI – East Wind (LP-1974)

April 3, 2015, 5:13 pm

≫ Next: STOMU YAMASH'TA – Red Buddha (LP-1971)

≪ Previous: GIORGIO GASLINI SESTETTO – Graffiti (2LP-1978)

$

0

0

Label: East Wind - EW-7001

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: Japan / Released: 1974

Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation

Recorded July 3, 1974 at Victor Studio, Tokyo

Engineer – Suenori Fukui

Liner Notes – Hisamitsu Noguchi

Mastered By – Stan Ricker

Photography By [Cover] – Hiroshi Satoh

Photography By [Liner] – Toshinari Koinuma, Yukio Ichikawa

Producer – Masaharu Honjoh

A - East Wind ................................. 20:09

B - Green Dance ............................ 23:56

Masabumi Kikuchi – piano

Kohsuke Mine – tenor saxophone

Terumasa Hino – trumpet

Juni Booth – bass

Eric Gravatt – druma, percussion

This is an acoustic, spiritual jazz set from 1974 that features five great players on two side-long pieces!

The players are Masabumi Kikuchi-piano, Terumasa Hino-trumpet, Kohsuke Mine-tenor sax, Juni Booth-double bass and Eric Gravatt-drums. Great music and great sound as well. This is the last 70s album by Masabumi that was an all acoustic work.

Born 1939 in Tokyo, pianist Masabumi Kikuchi played with Lionel Hampton and Sonny Rollins while still a teenager, and made his recording debut in the early 1960s with Toshiko Akiyoshi and Charlie Mariano. In the 1970s he collaborated with Gil Evans and Elvin Jones and led his own groups, in both acoustic and electric modes, variously drawing influence from Miles Davis and Stockhausen, from Duke Ellington and Ligeti and Takemitsu. Kikuchi was amongst a small group of musicians with whom Miles Davis would regularly confer in his post-“Agharta” retirement period, and recorded a still-unissued session with Miles in 1978. Several of Kikuchi’s 1980s recordings were devoted to the synthesizer, but by the 1990s he was again emphasizing acoustic piano, founding the group Tethered Moon with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian, a unit whose recorded repertoire often examined a particular composer’s or interpreter’s works: the discography includes tributes to Kurt Weill, Edith Piaf, Jimi Hendrix and Puccini. But as Kikuchi recently explained to film-maker Thomas Haley (in the documentary “Out of Bounds”) those days are gone: “I don’t want to be part of someone else’s history … and I’m more free now, because I started believing in myself.” Accordingly, the first ECM album by the veteran Japanese improviser finds him headed into new territory. “Lately”, he says, “when I sit down at the piano I do not prepare what I will play nor do I think about how to play, and I believe I found the way of putting out something new, and I guess I could call it my own”...

A brilliant set from Japanese pianist Masabumi Kikuchi – two long, leaping, loping tracks that almost feel like some of McCoy Tyner's best work! Kikuchi plays acoustic piano, and the group's a quartet with Terumasu Hino on trumpet, Koshuke Mine on tenor, Eric Gravatt on drums, and Juni Booth playing some really wonderful bass. Booth's bass leads the tracks with a soulful quality that you don't always hear on Kikuchi's other work – really giving the record a strongly-rooted vibe, while the musicians are still free to really open up and explore. The album's tracks, "East Wind" and "Green Dance", are both excellent examples of the soulful freedoms allowed in the Japanese scene of the 70s – side-long numbers that are different both from contemporary performances on both the US and European scenes of the period.

If you find it, buy this album!

STOMU YAMASH'TA – Red Buddha (LP-1971)

April 3, 2015, 5:16 pm

≫ Next: DON RENDELL / IAN CARR QUINTET – Live (LP-1969)

≪ Previous: MASABUMI KIKUCHI – East Wind (LP-1974)

$

0

0

Label: London Rec. – GP-1048

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: Japan / Released: 1971

Style: Experimental, Contemporary

Recorded April 11, 12, 14; 1971, Tokyo, Japan.

Liner Notes – Hikaru Hayashi

Originally released by King Record Co. Ltd. in 1971. Tokyo

Composed By, Arranged By – Stomu Yamash'ta

A  -  Red Buddha ................................... 15:27

B  -  As Expanding As ............................ 16:01

percussion – Stomu Yamash'ta

This Japanese percussionist/keyboardist started in the early 70's, but first started working in France for avant-garde theatres, then would move on to the UK, where his real solo career would start. Red Buddha is the first document, and it is probably Stomu's least accessible, but nevertheless a stunning achievement as there is mostly just percussion instruments making the two sides of this album. Both tracks make the duration of their respective vinyl face between 15 and 16 minutes.

While the execution of the music is stunning and very impressive, the compositions are anything but easy; with the tracks often nearing "musique concrete" with all of those tuned percussion instruments. The tracks are not improvisations, the music being clearly written and it was for the Red Buddha theatre in Paris. Difficult to describe this type of music, but it's sometimes dissonant, modern classical, percussive and exclusive of those not paying close attention to it...

Stomu Yamash'ta hit it big with his project GO that included well renowned musicians such as Mike Shrieve, Klaus Schulze, Steve Winwood and Al di Meola.

Well as much as I like the GO project, I am much more enthralled by this early offering of his called 'Red Buddha'. Now many of you out there probably know Yamash'ta as a synthesist, but fact of the matter is that he started out as a percussionist, a damn fine one at that!

Red Buddha is actually the name of a theatre in Paris, to which this album was recorded for. Yamash'ta had been studying the jazz traditions of the west, and they had brought him to Europe where a new explorative mindset seemed to adorn every major city's sparkling undergrowth. Paris, in particular, being one of the hot spots.

The music is all instrumental and all about the beat, the drums. There are no synths, no guitars no nothing besides a boot-full of percussion instruments, some more exotic than others. The end result amounts to something like the expression one finds in the electronic quarters with big spacious slabs of sound coming awfully close to the kind you'll find on an early Klaus Schulze record...only it's all accomplished through rhythms - snaking and twirling.

What really sets Red Buddha apart from other such proto stomp records is the way Yamash'ta seems to have fiddled around with sound treatments. Either by tuning a drum a certain way or simply by placing the mic somewhere groovy. It works though, damn how it works! Everything from soft hand drum splashes to strange modal sounding entities that flicker about like lonely candlesticks sitting on a windy field.

The first time you hear this you'll probably write it off as a late hippie project with some longhaired guy banging away on pots and pans. Please try again is all I can say. Contrary to common sense the music is fully orchestrated. The LP comes with the original sheet music. Sheet music?!?!? Oh yes. All of this rhythmic mayhem started out as a wee brainworm inside the enigmatic mind of Yamash'ta...........then again, when you return to this album you pick up new shadings - new splashes.....and woe and behold something akin to melodies. The 10th time you listen the world opens up and every fibre of your body twitches and bobs to the beat and suddenly it seems as if those elusive melodies you'd been sniffing earlier on now are way upfront, in your face and bizarrely beautiful. A vast tapestry of beats - like a thousand hearts beating in tune from obscure angles and different corners of the world.

Think of Red Buddha as one of those tricky 3D pictures you have to be cross-eyed to see: 'OH A DINOSAUR!!!'. You better believe it, and what a dinosaur! This is without a doubt my favourite Yamash'ta record. It eclipses everything that comes after. Why? Ingenuity, imagination and execution. Red Buddha should be mandatory listening to anyone interested in the early progressive scene, and here I'm talking progressive with a huge P - yet without ever becoming tedious academic music that only speaks to mathematicians and Scottish hermits. This one always manages to refuel my senses. Like a fiery phoenix or Buddha doing the jig - you decide.

_ Review by Guldbamsen

Great progressive/jazz percussion album.

If you find it, buy this album!

DON RENDELL / IAN CARR QUINTET – Live (LP-1969)

April 7, 2015, 11:08 am

≫ Next: ARCHIE SHEPP / LARS GULLIN QUINTET – The House I Live In (1963-LP-1980)

≪ Previous: STOMU YAMASH'TA – Red Buddha (LP-1971)

$

0

0

Label: Columbia – SCX 6316

Series: Lansdowne Series –

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: UK / Released: 1969

Style: Post Bop, Improvisation

Recorded: Landsdowne Studios, Holland Park, London, March 18, 1968.

Supervision by – Denis Preston

Sleevenote by – Ian Carr

Album Design by – Gerald Laing

Engineer by – David Heelis

A1 - On Track .............................. 8:21

A2 - Vignette ................................ 4:59

A3 - Pavanne ................................ 9:15

B1 - Nimjam ................................. 3:59

B2 - Voices ................................. 13:36

B3 - You've Said It ....................... 8:40

Don Rendell – tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone, flute, clarinet

Ian Carr – trumpet, flugelhorn

Michael Garrick – piano

Dave Green – bass

Trevor Tomkins – drums, percussion

The Don Rendell-Ian Carr Quintet still holds a special place in the affections of British Jazz fans.

Back in 1962, Don Rendell had a quintet with Graham Bond on alto.  “Graham phoned up out of the blue and told me he was going to play the organ and sing,” Don told me.  “I wasn’t thinking about having an organ and singing in the quintet, so we just parted.  I had no notice about it.”  That band had not long released an album, Roarin’, on the Jazzland label.  Tony Archer, the group’s bassist, suggested Don check out Ian Carr, newly arrived from Newcastle.  “He was playing at the Flamingo Club with some band,”  Don explains.  “I thought he’s good, so I said to Tony, ‘Yeah, we’ll try and get Ian to come in.’  It just changed over night from Graham Bond to Ian Carr.”

Ian was playing with Harold McNair, the Jamaican reedsman.  He takes up the story,  “I’d come from the MC5 (Mike Carr Five) – a world class band – and Harold didn’t really have any kind of policy and wasn’t very well organised.”  Ian jumped at the chance to join what was then the new Don Rendell Quintet.  Meanwhile, John Mealing had replaced original pianist John Burch, Trevor Tomkins was now the drummer and shortly after Dave Green took Tony Archer’s place.

This band features on the Spotlite Records’ album The Don Rendell 4 & 5 plus the Don Rendell-Ian Carr Quintet.  The band recorded the sides for American Hank Russell, Howard Keel’s musical director, in ‘64.  Russell and Don were Jehovah’s Witnesses and Don describes it as ‘a friendship thing.”  Russell hoped to secure a release in the States but nothing came of it.  Backed with three tracks from the group’s appearance at the Antibes Jazz Festival in 1968, it reveals an already fine mature group but the contrast with the Antibes tracks is enormous.  When Shades of Blue came out in ’64, Colin Purbrook was on piano and the band had moved on artistically.  Where the Russell record draws heavily on the Great American Songbook, Shades of Blue focuses on original compositions.

Dave Green feels the early quintet was ‘very based on the Miles’ thing’.  “We were trying to emulate these great players,” he laughs.  “I was trying to do a Paul Chambers and Trevor was trying to do a Jimmy Cobb.  John was influenced by Wynton Kelly but as time went on the band really matured a lot.”  For Dave, Michael Garrick’s arrival later in ’64 signalled the change.  “We started utilising a lot of Indian type compositions Michael used to write and the whole band became really strong after Michael joined.”  Ian feels there was something uniquely poetic about the group’s music.  “I think that was one of the reasons people liked it so much.  It wasn’t hard-driving like a lot of American Jazz of the time.  We had different kind of focuses than the Americans.  We were into texture and different rhythms.  And Michael Garrick was steeped in Indian Music as well.  We found we could do so many things that we never thought of before.”

Michael Garrick echoed this when we spoke last year.  It was about one’s own roots.  As he said then, “Whether we like it or not we’re English and I wasn’t born in Chicago or New Orleans but in Enfield,” he said.  The recent release of The Rendell/Carr Quintet Live in London (Harkit HRKCD8045) shows how fast they were developing.   Their compositions leapt from the group’s shared identity.  There was no policy decision to feature original material, as Don explained, “It was quite brave in a way because we had so many originals with Michael, Ian and me writing.  Suddenly we’d gone a whole concert without using a standard.  It just happened.”

However, as Trevor Tomkins explains, it soon became a question of principle. “We did a BBC Jazz Club broadcast and wanted to do all original stuff.  There was quite a heated discussion because they said, ‘Can’t you throw in a few American Standards?’  We insisted and I think we were the first band they had do a set of totally original music.  At gigs we’d get requests for original material.”  With Warren Mitchell and Sam Wannamaker amongst their fans, ‘the Five’ attracted ‘a nice class of audience’.  There’s a wonderful group atmosphere that comes across on “Live” and the Harkit recording – it’s Warren Mitchell’s ‘ribald comments’ you can hear on “Live”.  This is a band doing it, as Don says, because they love it.

Dave Green recalls, “We always used to travel and room together.  Somehow we got the gear in Trevor’s Vauxhall and we all piled in.  It was so exciting.  I was absolutely thrilled to be with that band.”  And as Trevor Tomkins points out, it was clearly a group, not two great horn players plus rhythm.  He told me recently, “That was really my schooling.  All of us contributed in lots of different ways.  It was a group effort.  If Ian came in with a new composition it wasn’t, ‘this is how it’s got to be done.’  It would be ideas and experimenting with things and almost letting it grow naturally.”

Perhaps Dusk Fire is their most popular record and backed with Shades of Blue it makes of a hell of a package.  But Phase III/“Live” reveals a developing band.  As Don points out Phase III saw changes in Ian’s writing.  “Ones like Crazy Jane and Les Neiges D’Antan were approaching Free Music, no time with no harmonic structure, (while) I’d always written time and harmonic structure.”  With Garrick stretching the group with his Indian-influenced pieces and Don’s ‘Coltrane out of Lester Young’ approach, the Quintet could go in any of a number of directions and frequently did.

And they worked regularly.  “We played a lot of Poetry & Jazz, mainly through Michael Garrick,” Don remembers.  “The poets were normally the same ones – Vernon Scannell, John Smith, Danny Abse and Jeremy Robson.  There were tours.  The northern tour took in Liverpool, Stoke, Leicester, Coventry and Ian coming from Newcastle fixed us to play there a few times.”  But apart from Antibes and Montreux, they never played in Europe and despite Ian’s best efforts a US trip never materialised.  However, a Poetry & Jazz concert for the BBC with Vernon Scannell (Epithets of War) got them on TV and they also did a BBC2 documentary.  Mike Dibbs, who did Ian’s Miles’ programme for Channel Four, was the producer.  Dave Green tells me, “He filmed us at the Phoenix on Cavendish Square and as I was getting married on March 1st ’68, he tied the wedding into the filming.  Mike had previously written this piece called Wedding Hymn so it ended up with the band playing it in the church filmed by the BBC.  It was extraordinary.”

In 1967, Ian’s wife Margaret had died shortly after giving birth to their daughter by Caesarean.  That’s her on the cover of Shades.  That night he rang Trevor who came over immediately, so Ian wouldn’t be alone.  “Some people think that’s why I put so much of myself into music and, in a way, music was my salvation,” Ian explains.  Perhaps that shows itself most in his contributions to Phase III and “Live” but by ’69, somehow the steam was going out.

Ghanaian percussionist Guy Warren had begun playing gigs with the group at Ian’s behest but, as Dave points out, this ‘didn’t meet with everybody’s approval’.  For Dave, ‘Things started to unravel for no particular reason I can remember.  Ian started getting quite frustrated.  I think he wanted it to go in a slightly different direction and Michael had his own ideas.”  Ian left at a gig in Camberley in ’69.  “Maybe I was just jaded,” he says now.  “I just went home and didn’t communicate with anybody for a few days.  I just felt the band was over.”

Nucleus would follow and Jazz-Rock certainly wouldn’t have sat easily with either Don or Michael.  For Michael, the whole Pop/Rock thing had little to do with the Jazz he loved.  For Don, it was a question of different priorities.  “Ian wanted his own band which was a different kind of music from what we’d been doing.  I didn’t have the Jazz Music commercial ambition that Ian had.  As a believing Christian I just didn’t want to do a month’s tour of the States or that kind of thing.  I’m a family man, I guess.”  With hindsight, Change Is tries to contain too many potentialities at one time.  The very thing that had made the group great – its breadth, its bravery, its quiet bravado – were its inner contradictions that eventually destroyed it.

Looking at the scene then and now, both Don and Trevor express concern at the  ‘chops for chops’ sake’ attitude they see in some young players, though both feel that most young players have now moved on from that.  As Dave Green suggests, “You can’t really compare one particular period with another.  Things that weren’t happening then are happening now and vice versa.”

The Don Rendell-Ian Carr Quintet

by jazzman

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in Jazz UK in the July/August 2004 issue.

With minor changes, the text is adapted to the needs of this post.

See original:

http://www.jazzinternationale.com/540/

If you find it, buy this album!

ARCHIE SHEPP / LARS GULLIN QUINTET – The House I Live In (1963-LP-1980)

April 13, 2015, 6:13 pm

≫ Next: LARS GULLIN – Lars Gullin (1953-55) / LP released - ?

≪ Previous: DON RENDELL / IAN CARR QUINTET – Live (LP-1969)

$

0

0

Label: SteepleChase – SCC 6013

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: Denmark / Released: 1980

Style: Free Jazz, Improvisation

Recorded live at Jazz Club Montmartre, Copenhagen, November 21, 1963.

Previously unissued recordings by the Danish radio

Artwork – Per Grunnet

Photography By – Jan Persson

Producer, Mixed By – Nils Wither

A1 - You Stepped Out Of A Dream ............... 19:40

A2 - I Should Care ........................................... 9:00

B1 - The House I Live In .................................. 9:35

B2 - Sweet Georgia Brown ............................ 11:25

Archie Shepp – tenor saxophone

Lars Gullin – baritone saxophone

Tete Montoliu – piano

Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen – bass

Alex Riel – drums, percussion

This is a fascinating release. Tenor-saxophonist Archie Shepp would not burst upon the U.S. avant-garde scene until 1964-65 but here he is featured at a Danish concert with the great coolbop baritonist Lars Gullin and a top-notch straightahead rhythm section (pianist Tete Montoliu, bassist Niels Pedersen and drummer Alex Riel). The quintet stretches out on four lengthy standards (including "Sweet Georgia Brown" and a 19-minute rendition of "You Stepped out of a Dream") and it is particularly interesting to hear the reactions of the other musicians to Shepp's rather free flights; at a couple of points Gullin tries to copy him. An important historical release.

Europe has always been fertile ground for Shepp. As he has said himself, the greater intellectualism of European audiences made it much easier for his complex music to find receptive ears. As a result several periods of his career have been spent in Europe and a great many recordings have become available. One of the earliest is this 1963 Danish concert featuring bop baritonist Lars Gullin and bass stalwart Niels Henning Orsted Pedersen.

Saxophonist and playwright Archie Shepp (b. May 24, 1937 in Fort Lauderdale. FL) then 26 years old visited Copenhagen in the fall of 1963 as a member of the famed New York Contemporary Five.

The quintet work through four standards, the opener 'You Stepped Out Of A Dream' being the high point. It's a long piece at nineteen minutes, giving Shepp ample time to improvise in his usual manner. The contrast with the straight-ahead rhythm section is marked, being all the more obvious at those times when Gullin tries (not always successfully) to follow Shepp in his flights.

Though Shepp at that time was the passionate practitioner of Free jazz, this recording in which he shared the bandstand with Sweden’s legendary baritone sax Gullin is something quite different from what one normally expects from Shepp in the 60s. It is Shepp playing straight jazz with audible enjoyment showing off his broad range of expression.

If you find it, buy this album!

LARS GULLIN – Lars Gullin (1953-55) / LP released - ?

April 13, 2015, 6:35 pm

≫ Next: 4. INTERNATIONAL ZAGREB JAZZ FAIR 1982, Yugoslavia / Various – Soul Street (Jugoton / 2LP-1983)

≪ Previous: ARCHIE SHEPP / LARS GULLIN QUINTET – The House I Live In (1963-LP-1980)

$

0

0

Label: EmArcy – MG 36012

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: US / Released: ?

Style: Bop, Contemporary

Recorded in Stockholm on November 6, 1953 (A1, A2, B1, B2) and on January 26, 1955 (A3, A4, B3, B4).

All tunes also available on 45 RPM records EP-1-6121, EP-1-6122 and EP-1-6123.

A1 - Bugs .................................................................. 3:10

        (by – Lars Gullin)

A2 - Jump For Fan .................................................... 3:40

        (by – Lars Gullin)

A3 - Lars Meets Jeff ................................................. 5:20

        (by – Lars Gullin)

A4 - A La Carte ......................................................... 5:25

        (by – Georg Riedel)

B1 - Stock And Bonds ............................................... 4:05

        (by – Georg Riedel)

B2 - I Fall In Love Too Easily .................................... 4:25

        (by – Jule Styne / Sammy Cahn)

B3 - Manchester Fog ................................................. 3:30

        (by – Lars Gullin)

B4 - Soho .................................................................. 5:20

        (by – Lars Gullin)

Personnel:

A-1, A-2, B-1, B-2:

Lars Gullin (bs), Carl-Henrik Norin (ts), Rolf Berg (g), George Riedel (b), Alan Dawson (ds).

Recorded in Stockholm, Sweden on November 6, 1953.

A-3, B-3, B-4:

Lars Gullin (bs), Rolf Berg (g), George Riedel (b), Bo Stoor (ds).

Recorded in Stockholm, Sweden on January 26, 1955.

A-4:

same personnel, date and place, except Lars Gullin (bs, p)

Lars Gullin was one of the most famous baritone saxophonists from Sweden - actually he was elected the new star of the year (1954) by a board of critics, on baritone saxophone in the Down Beat Critics' Poll. Also, before the Critics' Poll, many US Jazz players who toured to North Europe noticed Lars Gullin's artistry - such musicians as Chet Baker, James Moody and Stan Getz played with Lars Gullin.

Like Gerry Mulligan, he doubles on baritone sax and piano (his piano comping at the keyboard can be heard on A-4). But of course his primary instrument is baritone sax. His tone is heart-warming as well as swingy - as Chet Baker recalled Lars in his late days “... Lars played with a lot more fire and a lot more authority in some ways than Gerry did ...”

This LP features two different sessions both recorded in Stockholm, Sweden by Metronome label. Listen to Lars' fruitful improvisations on B-1 - this track itself easily proves he was one of the best baritone players in Sweden.

Cover:

Gullin recorded prolifically, and a selection of covers from Birka-Jazz show modern retro design and furnishing, as well as some  dodgy Viking stereotyping. With so much output I was surprised to never have heard of him until now. May be like British jazz, Swedish jazz was mainly for domestic consumption. Anyway I have done my bit to raise the Swedish flag.

I keep looking with envy at that tiered seated theatre audience, the men all in suit collar and tie, accompanied by wives and girlfriends (possibly both in progressive Sweden).  Amazing. Venue and audience like this simply do not exist any more, another time and place.

Originally issued on a series of EPs in Sweden. Its a little bit crackly, but then it has had to survive the most grueling years for vinyl, the Fifties.

Note:

Source: London Suburban record store, neglected in a shelf, on account of there probably being hardly a soul in the 300,000 population of the borough who would know who Lars Gullin was, and be interested in vinyl. Inexpensive in the light of its VG condition. Heaven only knows how it made its way there.

_By LJC (August 1, 2012)

If you find it, buy this album!

4. INTERNATIONAL ZAGREB JAZZ FAIR 1982, Yugoslavia / Various – Soul Street (Jugoton / 2LP-1983)

April 18, 2015, 12:45 pm

≫ Next: PGP RTB – Sastanak U Studiju (Meeting In Studio) - I / II / III (3LPs-1960/1961)

≪ Previous: LARS GULLIN – Lars Gullin (1953-55) / LP released - ?

$

0

0

Label: Jugoton – LSY-65045/6

Format: 2 × Vinyl, LP, Compilation, Gatefold / Country: Yugoslavia

Released: 26. October, 1983

Style: Contemporary Jazz, Improvisation

IV International Zagreb Jazz Fair was recorded in Zagreb' GSP Kulušić and in KD Vatroslav Lisinski from October 12.-15. 1982.

Cover – Ivan Ivezić

Cover Lines & Photos – Mladen Mazur

Edited By – Vida Ramušćak

Editor-In-Chief – Dubravko Majnarić

Producer – Mladen Mazur

Recorded By – Mladen Škalec

A1 - Giorgio Gaslini Quintet – Soul Street (G.Gaslini) .................................... 14:15

A2 - Hans Koller Quartet – Soma (H.Koller) ..................................................... 9:05

B1 - Stan Tracey Trio – Sophisticated Lady (D.Ellington) .............................. 11:39

B2 - International Festival All Star – Green Apples (D.Kajfes) ....................... 11:05

C1 - Bacillus Quartet – Soul Street (L.Gardony) .............................................. 7:20

C2 - B.P. Convention & Friends – Song For Zagreb & Night Before Corrida

        (J.Kühn & F.Pauer) .................................................................................. 18:13

D1 - Bennie Wallace Trio – Tune Pangs (B.Wallace) ....................................... 9:08

D2 - Martial Solal Big Band – Valse a 3 Temps (M.Solal) ............................... 13:04

A1.  GIORGIO GASLINI QUINTET:

Giorgio Gaslini - piano; Claudio Allifranchini - alto, soprano sax, flute; Maurizio Caldura - alto, tenor sax; Giancarlo Paven - bass; Paolo Pallehatti - drums

A2.  HANS KOLLER QUARTET:

Hans Koller - soprano, tenor sax; Fritz Pauer - keyboard; Paul Schwartz - keyboards; Uve Schmidt - drums

B1.  STAN TRACEY TRIO:

Stan Tracey - piano; Roy Babington - bass; Clark Tracey - drums

B2.  INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL ALL STAR:

Peter Ugrin - trumpet, flhorn; Simeon Sterev - flute; Miroslav Sedak-Bencic - tenor sax; Hans Solomon - tenor sax; George Haslam - bariton sax; Davor Kajfes - piano; Aladar Pege - Bass; Salih Sadikovic - drums

C1.  BACILLUS QUARTET:

Tony Lakatos - sopranino, tenor sax; Laslo Gardony - piano; Pal Vasvari - bass; Gabor Szende - drums

C2.  B.P. CONVENTION & FRIENDS:

Petar Ugrin, Ladislav Fidri - trumpets; Franc Puhar, Zvonko Kosak - trombones; George Haslam - bariton sax; Joakim Kühn - piano; Bosko Petrovic - vibraphone; Neven Franges - el.piano; Damir Dicic - guitar; Mario Marvin - bass; Salih Sadikovic - drums

D1.  BENNIE WALLACE TRIO:

Bennie Wallace - tenor sax; Mike Richmond - bass; Dannie Richmond - drums;

D2.  MARTIAL SOLAL BIG BAND:

Martial Solal - cond, piano; Bernard Marchais, Roger Guerin, Eric LeLan - trumpets; Francois Jeanneau, Pierre Gossez, Jean-Louis Chautemps, Jan-Pierre Debarbat - saxes; Jacques Bolognesi, Jean-Louis Chautempsee Harper - trumpet; Erich Kleinschuster - trombone; Mark Sterckar - tuba; Frédéric Sylvestre - guitar; Pierre Blanchard - violin; Hervé Derrien - cello; Césarius Alvim - bass; Umberto Pagnini - drums

In Bled 1960. held the first Yugoslav Jazz Festival, which will later move to Ljubljana. For affirmation of jazz in the seventies (in this region) most significant were the "Zagreb Jazz Fair" and "Belgrade Jazz Festival", and the eighties: "Naissus Jazz Festival" (Niš), "Belgrade Summer Festival", and jazz festivals in Skopje and Novi Sad.

Enjoy this very rare double LP from ex-Yugoslavia:

4. INTERNATIONAL ZAGREB JAZZ FAIR 1982 – SOUL STREET (Jugoton LSY-65045/6) 

The list of musicians is impressive.

If you find it, buy this album!

---

PGP RTB – Sastanak U Studiju (Meeting In Studio) - I / II / III (3LPs-1960/1961)

April 22, 2015, 4:41 pm

≫ Next: ART PEPPER – So In Love (Artists House / LP-1980)

≪ Previous: 4. INTERNATIONAL ZAGREB JAZZ FAIR 1982, Yugoslavia / Various – Soul Street (Jugoton / 2LP-1983)

$

0

0

PGP RTB - Sastanak U Studiju (Meeting In Studio) - LP-1960

Jerome Richardson / Boško Petrović And Others

Label: PGP RTB – LP 401

Format: Vinyl, 10 inch, Album / Country: Yugoslavia

Released: 1960

Style: Hard Bop, Improvisation

Recorded in RTB Studio VI, Belgrade, 16 June 1960, Yugoslavia

Reviewer – Svetolik Jakovljević

Responsible Editor – Stanko Terzić

A1 - Dve Pesme (Two Songs) ................................ 6:37

        (By – Julius Watkins)

A2 - Zašto U Bluzu (Way In Blues) ........................ 6:22

        (By – Jerome Richardson)

B1 - Nežna Flauta (Minor Flute) ............................. 7:39

        (By – Jerome Richardson)

B2 - Noć U Tunisu (Night In Tunisia) ...................... 5:40

        (By – Dizzy Gillespie)

Jerome Richardson – tenor sax, flute

Julius Watkins – french horn

Boško Petrović – vibraphone

Davor Kajfeš – piano

George "Buddy" Catlett – bass

Joe Harris – drums, percussio

PGP RTB - II Sastanak U Studiju (II Meeting In Studio) - LP-1961

Jack Dieval And His Quartet with E. Sadjil & P. Ivanović

Label: PGP RTB – LP 406

Format: Vinyl, 10 inch, LP, Album / Country: Yugoslavia

Released: 1961

Style: Hard Bop, Improvisation

Recorded in RTB Studio VI, Belgrade, 1961, 4-5 March, Yugoslavia

Reviewer – Svetolik Jakovljević

Responsible Editor – Stanko Terzić

Jack Dieval And His Quartet with Eduard Sadjil and Predrag Ivanović

A1- Novčići S Neba (Coins From Heaven) .................................. 6:42

        tenor saxophone – Sadjil / trumpet – Predrag Ivanović

        (written-by – Johnston, Burke)

A2 - Mesečina U Vermontu (Moonlight In Vermont) .................. 2:53

         trumpet [solo] – Predrag Ivanović

A3 - Gloria .................................................................................... 2:45

         tenor saxophone [Solo] – Eduard Sadjil

         (written-By – René Miselvia)

Jack Dieval And His Quartet In Belgrade

B1 - Tema Br. 4 ............................................................................ 5:06

         (by – Aleksandar Nećak)

B2 - Moj Rodni Kraj (My Birthplace) .......................................... 5:24

         (written-by – Ivo Robić)

B3 - Srećan Put (Have A Nice Trip) ............................................. 4:08

         (written-By – Milan Kotlić)

Jack Dieval – piano

François Jeanneau – tenor sax

Bernard Vitet – flugelhorn

Jackues Hess – bass

Art Taylor – drums

Predrag Ivanović – trumpet

Eduard Sadjil – tenor sax

PGP RTB - III Sastanak U Studiju (III Meeting In Studio) - LP-1961

Trio Borislav Roković with His Guests

Label: PGP RTB – LP 408

Format: Vinyl, 10 inch, LP, Album / Country: Yugoslavia

Released: 1961

Style: Hard Bop, Improvisation

Recorded in RTB Studio VI, Belgrade, 1961, 14 & 15 June, Yugoslavia

Reviewer – Svetolik Jakovljević

Responsible Editor – Stanko Terzić

Trio Borislav Roković with Milan Stojanović and Vojislav Djonović

A1 - Ružan San (Bad Dream) .................................................................................... 5:20

         (written-by – B. Roković)

A2 - Tema Iz Prosjačke Opere (Theme From Beggar's Opera) ................................. 4:45

         (written-by – K. Weil)

A3 - You'd Be So Nice To Come Home (Hoćeš Li Biti Dobar Da Se Vratiš Kući) ..... 5:14

         (written-by – C. Porter)

Trio Borislav Roković

B1 - Bee-Deedle-Dee-Doo ......................................................................................... 4:35

         (written-by – B. Kessel)

B2 - The Midnight Sun Will Never Set (Ponoćno Sunce Nikad Neće Zaći) ............. 3:55

         (written-By – Q. Jones)

B3 - Donna Lee .......................................................................................................... 4:32

         (written-by – Ch. Parker)

Borislav Roković – piano

Joe Sydow – bass

Hans Hoitz – drums, percussion

Milan Stojanović – tenor sax, flute

Vojislav Djonović – guitar

The label (PGP RTB) has used oportunity to invite some foreign musicians during their visit to Belgrade to do a recording jam-session with a local jazz musicians and here are the results. All of them are now established names. Bosko Petrovic at that time was a student but was already leading his trio and Zagreb Jazz Quartet. Davor Kajfes was another member of ZJQ. All foreign guests this time came to Belgrade in 1960 with Quincy Jones band.

The most obscure group in this great 3-volume Meetings In Studio series -- a session that features work by an all-Eastern European jazz ensemble from 1961 -- Borislav Rokovic on piano, Joe Sydow on bass, Hans Hoitz on drums, Milan Stojanivic on tenor and flute, and Vojislav Djonovic on guitar. Tracks are short and tight -- nicely grooving in a laidback way that recalls some of the hipper RCA jazz sessions of the mid 50s.

Enjoy!

If you find it, buy this albums!

ART PEPPER – So In Love (Artists House / LP-1980)

April 30, 2015, 9:32 am

≫ Next: WILDFLOWERS 5 – The New York Loft Jazz Sessions (Douglas / LP5-1977)

≪ Previous: PGP RTB – Sastanak U Studiju (Meeting In Studio) - I / II / III (3LPs-1960/1961)

$

0

0

Label: Artists House – AH 9412

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: US / Released: 1980

Style: Contemporary Jazz

Tracks A1, B1: Recorded 2-23-79, New York, NY.

Tracks A2, A3, B2: Recorded 5-26-79, Burbank, CA.

Cover Art by – Alyssia Lazin

Design by – Lazin & Katalan

Art Director by – Carol Friedman

Producer by – John Snyder

A1 - Straight No Chaser ............................................... 6:26

         Composed By – Thelonious Monk

A2 - Blues For Blanche ................................................ 6:49

         Composed By – Art Pepper

A3 - So In Love ........................................................... 11:37

         Composed By – Cole Porter

B1 - Diane ................................................................... 12:22

         Composed By – Art Pepper

B2 - Stardust ............................................................... 10:34

         Composed By – Hoagy Carmichael, Mitchell Parish

Art Pepper – alto saxophone, clarinet

Hank Jones – piano (tracks: A1, B1)

George Cables – piano (tracks: A2, A3, B2)

Ron Carter – bass (tracks: A1, B1)

Charlie Haden – bass (tracks: A2, A3, B2)

Al Foster – drums, percussion (tracks: A1, B1)

Billy Higgins – drums, percussion (tracks: A2, A3, B2)

Pepper's "So in Love" continues his post prison fiery play. Critics who believe his earlier work is his best must not be hearing Pepper's final blowing. It is simultaneously lyrical and hot, as if Art knew that this was, indeed, it - his last chance to say everything he had to say. The actual cut "So in Love" is a favorite. It has an underlying tension that is subtle and yet almost unbearable. Art's early death left a huge hole, but in a way it's inevitability led to some of the best alto work ever recorded.

The altoist stretches out here on a program of standards and blues, backed by alternating rhythm sections from the East and West coasts.

Pianist Hank Jones is all one could ask for in an accompanist, and his aching solo on Diane sustains perfectly the restive mood of Pepper's opening choruses. Overall, the West Coast team pianist George Cables, whose great rapport with Pepper is unmatched, along with jazz legends Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins powers the music along with great care and economy. Pepper had climbed to such a plateau of individuality that he seems often here to be drawing his unconscious influences into the light and remembering what it was he loved about them in the first place.

On a leisurely Stardust, he daffodils his sentiments with the grace and cunning of a Lester Young. The title track, a Cole Porter waltz that agitates into a collective improvisation by its climax, offers the best illustration of the wondrous use Pepper makes of John Coltrane. It isn't in this case a matter of piling up chords or of playing more notes, as it is with so many others, but rather of drawing on extreme registers of the horn to express more conflicting emotions, to reach deeper and higher recesses of the viscera and the psyche.

___________________

Art Pepper, more creatively prolific in his late years than at almost any other time in his troubled life, cuts as sharply as a scythe when he's taking on an edge on this 1979 set. He appears in two different quartet formations, the first with pianist Hank Jones, bassist Ron Carter, and versatile drummer Al Foster, and the second with pianist George Cables and the rhythmic duo Ornette Coleman used so effectively, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Billy Higgins. The Jones-Carter-Foster lineup moves more measuredly than the Cables-Haden-Higgins one. Chalk it up to Coleman's speedy "harmolodic" compressions, but Haden and Higgins dance all over the melodies, pressing Pepper to spray alto lines in multiple directions almost at once. "Diane" is lovingly taken, with Pepper finding in Jones a great, romantic colleague.

And if you find yourself curious about Pepper, try reading his tell-all autobiography "Straight Life", jazz's greatest confessional.

http://straightlife.info/apautobook.html

This album, recorded on 1979, in the period Art Pepper had the support of his sentimental couple, Laurie Pepper, is a masterpiece. And it shows that, as it is affirmed everywhere, this man didn't need to practice a lot, he simply took his saxo and performed a beautiful jazz with great honesty and nobleness. Art Pepper, with all his defects and tortuous life due to drug dependency, is a well bred musician and he shows himself naked before we all. If God finally exists I guess he decided to take him to heaven, because of his honesty and the artistry he gave us all. The two different rhythm sections of this album are excellent. I have no doubt about recommending it.

If you find it, buy this album!

WILDFLOWERS 5 – The New York Loft Jazz Sessions (Douglas / LP5-1977)

May 8, 2015, 4:04 pm

≫ Next: WILDFLOWERS 4 – The New York Loft Jazz Sessions (Douglas / LP4-1977)

≪ Previous: ART PEPPER – So In Love (Artists House / LP-1980)

$

0

0

Label: Douglas – NBLP 7049

Series: Wildflowers: The New York Loft Jazz Sessions – 5

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: US / Released: 1977

Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation

Recorded May 14 thru May 23, 1976 at Studio Rivbea, 24 Bond Street, New York.

Engineer [Assistant] – Les Kahn

Engineer [Chief] – Ron Saint Germain

Engineer [Remote Assistant] – Matt Murray

Executive-producer – Harley I. Lewin

Liner Notes – Ross Firestone

Mastered By – Ray Janos

Photography By – Peter Harron

Producer – Alan Douglas, Michael Cuscuna, Sam Rivers

A - Sunny Murray & The Untouchable Factor– Something's Cookin' ......... 17:00

       Alto Saxophone, Flute – Byard Lancaster

       Bass – Fred Hopkins

       Drums – Sunny Murray

       Tenor Saxophone – David Murray

       Vibraphone – Khan Jamal

B - Roscoe Mitchell– Chant ........................................................................ 25:19

       Alto Saxophone – Roscoe Mitchell

       Drums – Don More

       Percussion, Drums, Saw – Jerome Cooper

...Probably most representative document of loft jazz era was this five vinyl set "Wildflowers", recorded during May 1976 at Rivbea Studio and released on tiny Douglas Records in 1977. Decades after this release received almost cult status. Each of five albums contains collection of compositions recorded by different artists...

And in the end always comes delicacy, long mantra Roscoe Mitchell's "Chant" (an exercise in marathon circular breathing that walks the line between exhilarating and fantastic)—but at the same time houses a couple of the collection's most outstanding selections. 

The other highlight of the fifth vinyl, is the return of Sunny Murray and the Untouchable Factor for the 17-minute "Something's Cookin'". Beginning as a fragile web supported by Murray's cymbal whispers, the mood expands through the otherworldly plateaus spun by Jamal's vibes and a kinetic tenor/alto dialogue between Murray and Lancaster—only to finish on the spiritual edge where Hopkins' bowed levitations meet Lancaster's primordial flute... oh yes...

No self-respecting listener of free jazz should go without hearing these sessions, as they document a period in the music's history that, until now, has been severely neglected.

But, and this is very important:

The psychedelic colors of the record cover jumped out to me immediately. I loved the album art - a collage of jazz greats fronting a backdrop of New York City. It was so different...

Enjoy!

If you find it, buy this album!

WILDFLOWERS 4 – The New York Loft Jazz Sessions (Douglas / LP4-1977)

May 8, 2015, 4:05 pm

≫ Next: WILDFLOWERS 3 – The New York Loft Jazz Sessions (Douglas / LP3-1977)

≪ Previous: WILDFLOWERS 5 – The New York Loft Jazz Sessions (Douglas / LP5-1977)

$

0

0

Label: Douglas – NBLP 7048

Series: Wildflowers: The New York Loft Jazz Sessions – 4

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: US / Released: 1977

Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation

Recorded May 14 thru May 23, 1976 at Studio Rivbea, 24 Bond Street, New York.

Engineer [Assistant] – Les Kahn

Engineer [Chief] – Ron Saint Germain

Engineer [Remote Assistant] – Matt Murray

Executive-producer – Harley I. Lewin

Liner Notes – Ross Firestone

Mastered By – Ray Janos

Photography By – Peter Harron

Producer – Alan Douglas, Michael Cuscuna, Sam Rivers

A1 - Hamiet Bluiett– Tranquil Beauty ....................................................... 6:30

         Baritone Saxophone, Clarinet – Hamiet Bluiett

         Bass – Juney Booth

         Drums – Charles Bobo Shaw, Don Moye

         Guitar – Billy Patterson, Butch Campbell

         Trumpet – Olu Dara

A2 - Julius Hemphill– Pensive ................................................................. 10:00

         Alto Saxophone – Julius Hemphill

         Cello – Abdul Wadud

         Drums – Phillip Wilson

         Guitar – Bern Nix

         Percussion – Don Moye

B1 - Jimmy Lyons– Push Pull ................................................................... 5:20

         Alto Saxophone – Jimmy Lyons

         Bass – Hayes Burnett

         Bassoon – Karen Borca

         Drums – Henry Maxwell Letcher

B2 - Oliver Lake– Zaki .............................................................................. 9:30

         Alto Saxophone – Oliver Lake

         Bass – Fred Hopkins

         Drums – Phillip Wilson

         Electric Guitar – Michael Jackson

B3 - David Murray– Shout Song ............................................................... 2:30

         Bass – Fred Hopkins

         Drums – Stanley Crouch

         Tenor Saxophone – David Murray

         Trumpet, Flugelhorn – Olu Dara

...The common critical consensus is that the 1970s, particularly the latter half of the decade, were the historical low point for jazz in America. Very few albums survive from that era, compared with the avalanches of reissues and vault clearing box-sets of 1950s and 60s groups. Part of this is, of course, due to the short shrift granted the avant-garde by most jazz historians. The music of the so-called "New Thing," which by rote doctrine had burned itself out by 1968, in fact continued throughout the 1970s, expanding to Europe in search of audiences and growing and evolving artistically to astonishing levels of power and beauty...

The 5-LPs set Wildflowers documents one small part of this forgotten music scene. Recorded over ten days in May 1976 at Sam Rivers’s Studio RivBea, this set contains an overwhelming amount of truly beautiful jazz performances, by names recognizable to almost anyone with a serious interest in the music. Saxophonists include Sam Rivers, David Murray, David S. Ware, Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, Byard Lancaster, Oliver Lake, Jimmy Lyons, Julius Hemphill and Henry Threadgill. Drummers include Sunny Murray, Don Moye, Steve McCall, Andrew Cyrille, and Stanley Crouch. Bassist Fred Hopkins is practically omnipresent here...

If you find it, buy this album!

WILDFLOWERS 3 – The New York Loft Jazz Sessions (Douglas / LP3-1977)

May 8, 2015, 4:05 pm

≫ Next: WILDFLOWERS 2 – The New York Loft Jazz Sessions (Douglas / LP2-1977)

≪ Previous: WILDFLOWERS 4 – The New York Loft Jazz Sessions (Douglas / LP4-1977)

$

0

0

Label: Douglas – NBLP 7047

Series: Wildflowers: The New York Loft Jazz Sessions – 3

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: US / Released: 1977

Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation

Recorded May 14 thru May 23, 1976 at Studio Rivbea, 24 Bond Street, New York.

Engineer [Assistant] – Les Kahn

Engineer [Chief] – Ron Saint Germain

Engineer [Remote Assistant] – Matt Murray

Executive-producer – Harley I. Lewin

Liner Notes – Ross Firestone

Mastered By – Ray Janos

Photography By – Peter Harron

Producer – Alan Douglas, Michael Cuscuna, Sam Rivers

A1 - Randy Weston– Portrait Of Frank Edward Weston ............................... 8:50

         Bass – Alex Blake

         Congas – Azzedin Weston

         Piano, Written-By – Randy Weston

A2 - Michael Jackson– Clarity ....................................................................... 5:15

         Acoustic Guitar, Written-By – Michael Jackson

         Bass – Fred Hopkins

         Drums – Phillip Wilson

         Soprano Saxophone, Flute – Oliver Lake

A3 - Dave Burrell– Black Robert ................................................................... 6:30

         Bass – Stafford James

         Drums – Harold White

         Piano, Written-By – Dave Burrell

B1 - Abdullah– Blue Phase .......................................................................... 12:37

         Double Bass – Rickie Evans

         Drums – Rashied Sinan

         Electric Bass – Leroy Seals

         Guitar – Mashujaa

         Tenor Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone – Charles Bracken

         Trumpet, Written-By – Ahmed Abdullah

B2 - Andrew Cyrille & Maono– Short Short .................................................. 7:30

         Bass – Lyle Atkinson

         Drums, Written-By – Andrew Cyrille  (Rights Society: ASCAP)

         Tenor Saxophone – David Ware

         Trumpet – Ted Daniel

...The jazz of the 1970s, particularly in New York, was a vital and searching music, just as the best jazz has always been. Musicians like Sam Rivers, David Murray, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, the World Saxophone Quartet, Cecil Taylor and many others worked tirelessly, expanding their tonal vocabularies and creating shimmering and brilliant soundscapes for whoever was still listening. The audiences were, indeed, smaller. But the scope of the artistic achievement was as grand as ever.

This is an astonishing document, sonically wide-open to anyone with an ear for music of the spirit. The performances are varied enough, and sequenced in such a manner, that the most palatable, groove-oriented works will draw the listener in that he or she may appreciate the more abstract, experimental works as well. This music’s vitality is timeless; these recordings should be heard by anyone with anything more than a glancing interest in jazz...

If you find it, buy this album!