TED CURSON with GEORGES ARVANITAS TRIO – Pop Wine (LP-1971)

Label: Futura Records – GER 26

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album & Country: France Released: 1971

Style: Free Jazz, Leftfield, Contemporary Jazz

Recorded 18 June 1971 at Europasonor Studio, Paris

Design – Pierre Delgado

Layout – Jean-Pierre Bonnet

Photography By – Christian Fauchard, Philippe Gras

Recorded By – Claude Martenot

Producer – Gérard Terrones

Composed By – Ted Curson

Matrix / Runout (Side A Etched Runout): Fut. 2028 A MP

Matrix / Runout (Side B Etched Runout): Fut. 2028 B MP

side A

A1 - Pop Wine ...................................................................................................... 5:10

A2 - L.S.D. Takes A Holiday ............................................................................... 12:40

A3 - Song Of The Lonely One .............................................................................. 5:45

side B

B1 - Quartier Latin .............................................................................................. 13:20

B2 - Flip Top ......................................................................................................... 6:30

Personnel:

Ted Curson – trumpet, piccolo trumpet

Georges Arvanitas – piano

Jacky Samson – bass

Charles Saudrais – drums, percussion

This Futura LP issue of vanguard trumpet legend Ted Curson with the Georges Arvanitas Trio in a Paris studio is one of those very special dates where everything seems to go right.

Curson is in excellent form here, whether he is playing free improvisation as on "Latin Quarter," and is a fiery 13-minute excursion into the outer reaches of free jazz, or turning in a slightly bent but nonetheless streaming hard-bop performance as on the "Flip Top." The Arvanitas Trio, an under-celebrated band that backed virtually every major American musician in Paris proves how well it adapts to Curson's muscular style by responding with more muscle. Arvanitas' left-hand rhythm comping is tough and full of fire and edges. On "L.S.D. Takes a Holiday," Arvanitas pushes Curson hard to the edges of a harmonic shelf that finally bleeds off into a blazing symmetry of angles that is propelled into an abyss by the ferocious bass playing of the under-heralded Jacky Sampson. Also noteworthy are Curson's compositions here that, like much music of their time, leave tradition to the dust. He engages it and the blues in a sort of modal inquiry, where he wraps extant ideas about form, tonal sonance, and intervallic architecture in a phraseology and compositional elegance that was beyond most of his peers. Futura's LP sounds warm, lovely, and very much alive.

Review by Thom Jurek, AllMusic

If you find it, buy this album!