DETAIL - Johnny Dyani/Frode Gjerstad/ John Stevens – Backwards And Forwards - First Detail (1982-85)

Label: Impetus Records – IMP CD 18203

Format: CD, Album, Reissue; Country: UK - Released: 2000

Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation

Recorded at Staccato Studios, Stavanger, Norway on 11th October 1982

Track C previously unreleased, recorded in 1985, no other details.

Original cover artwork (front cover reproduced above) 1 2 NO 1 by John Stevens

Original LP design by Fay Stevens

Engeneer By – Kjell Arne Jensen

The free jazz group Detail, co-founded by Norwegian saxophonist Frode Gjerstad and British drummer John Stevens, was most often a trio. In the beginning the third member was Norwegian pianist Eivin One Pedersen. Pedersen left shortly after bassist Johnny Dyani joined. After Dyani's death in 1986, Kent Carter took over as bassist. Detail continued performing and recording until Stevens' death in 1994. The group's seven recordings were released on Impetus, Cadence, and Gjerstad's label, Circulasione Totale.

Frode Gjerstad is one of the few Norwegian musicians playing modern improvised music outside the 'ECM-school'. He has chosen to play with foreign musicians because there is no tradition in Norway for free improvised music.

His relationship with John Stevens which started in 1981 and lasted up until Stevens' death in 1994 was of great importance both musically as well as on a personal level. Through Stevens, he became acquainted with the playing of some of the finest British improvisers. His longstanding group with Stevens, 'Detail', started as a trio in 1981 with keyboardist Eivin One Pedersen, though Johnny Mbizo Dyani came in on bass in 1982 and Pedersen left later that year. The group played mainly as a trio until Dyani's death in 1986, though they did invite occasional guests to fill out the lineup; they undertook a tour of Britain in 1986 as a quartet with Bobby Bradford on cornet. Bradford did another tour with Detail with Paul Rogers on bass and then one with Kent Carter on bass; a quartet tour of Norway was organised with Billy Bang in 1989. The group then continued as a trio with Carter till 1994 when Stevens died.

_ By Joslyn Layne, Rovi

Impetus Records:

http://www.impetusdistribution.co.uk/css/pages.ID/imp.id.html

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