LEO SMITH – Spirit Catcher (LP-1979)

Label: Nessa Records – N-19

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album; Country: US - Released: 1979

Style: Free Jazz, Contemporary Jazz

Recorded May 21, 1979 Van Gelder Studio.

Engineer – Rudy Van Gelder

Liner Notes – Robert Palmer

Producer, Photography By – Chuck Nessa

A  -  Images ...................................................................................................  19:15

B1 - The Burning Of Stones ............................................................................  9:47

B2 - Spirit Catcher ...........................................................................................  9:54

Leo Smith – trumpet, flugelhorn

Bobby Naughton – vibraphone [vibraharp] (tracks: A, B2)

Dwight Andrews – clarinet, tenor saxophone, flute [wooden flute] (tracks: A, B2)

Wes Brown – bass, flute [wooden flute] (tracks: A, B2)

Pheeroan AkLaff – drums (tracks: A, B2)

Carol Emanuel – harp (track: B1)

Irene Smith – harp (track: B1)

Ruth Emanuel – harp (track: B1)

"The dry and often esoteric trumpeter Leo Smith is featured with his quintet (consisting of Dwight Andrews on tenor, clarinet and flute, vibraphonist Bobby Naughton, bassist Wes Brown and drummer Pheeroan AkLaff) on the 19-minute "Images" and the colorful "Spirit Catcher." "The Burning of Stones" (dedicated to Anthony Braxton) has Smith's trumpet joined by three harpists for some unusual music. Throughout the LP the performances are unpredictable, and it's frequently difficult to know where the arrangement ends and the improvising begins. This is thought-provoking music that grows in interest with each listen."

_ By Scott Yanow, All Music Guide

Spirit Catcher finds Smith in a key period of his career. Having already played with kindred spirits in Anthony Braxton and in Derek Bailey’s Company, he was moving from solo improvisation to experimenting with radical new group compositions, underpinned by his own personal theories. Spirit Catcher came soon after the highly regarded Divine Love (ECM, 1979) where his muted trumpet was joined by those of Kenny Wheeler and Lester Bowie in an awesome threesome. On Spirit Catcher Smith creates contexts that are just as innovative as those on the ECM album.

The album opens with “Images,” a quintet piece which, as on the ECM album, is immediately given a cool, tranquillity by the inclusion in the rhythm section of Bobby Naughton’s vibes. Also retained from Divine Love is clarinetist Dwight Andrews; the two feed off each other and their lines interweave, complementing and enhancing one another. Throughout, the economy of Smith’s trumpet is worthy of comparison with Miles, foreshadowing his later Yo’ Miles group with Henry Kaiser.

More radical still takes of “The Burning of Stones,” on which the trumpet is accompanied by three harps. This setting takes Smith’s music way beyond the boundaries of “jazz.” Instead, this is almost a concerto for solo muted trumpet. But such distinctions become meaningless when the resulting music is this beautiful, this piece was not improvised but composed, the interactions between harps and trumpet being finely judged to display both to best effect. Dedicated to Braxton, it is Braxtonesque in its vision and its daring.

_ By JOHN EYLES (Dusted Reviews)

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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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LARS-GÖRAN ULANDER TRIO – Live At Glenn Miller Café (2004)

Label: Ayler Records – aylCD-013

Format: CD, Album; Country: Sweden - Released: 2005

Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation

Recorded in concert at the Glenn Miller Café, Stockholm, Sweden, August 25 & 26, 2004.

Design, Cover art By – Åke Bjurhamn

Layout By – Stéphane Berland

Photography By – Lars Jönson

Executive producer By – Jan Ström

One of the joys of recorded jazz is rediscovering a deserving artist that fell into the cracks of history. You've probably never heard of alto saxophonist Ulander, for example, unless you followed Swedish jazz in the 1960s, when he was actively recording with the likes of Berndt Egerbladh, a talented pianist who composed hip post-bop tunes, and Lars Lystedt, a valve trombonist and longtime fixture on the scene, or remember him as a member of radical pianist Per Henrik Wallin's mid-'70s free trio.

The problem was that few of those LPs were distributed outside of Sweden then, or survive now, and Ulander recorded less than a handful of sessions between 1975 and today, preferring a career as full-time producer at Swedish Radio to the rigors of the road. Live at the Glenn Miller Café is, in fact, Ulander's debut session as a leader, and displays his circuitous, lyrical improvising in five lengthy performances from 2004. In his younger days, Ulander exhibited a bit of Jackie McLean's biting tone and edgy urgency when playing more straightahead material, but now, exploring freer territory, he's neither extravagant nor overly expressionistic, engaging in open, conversational interplay with bassist Palle Danielsson and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love.

  Lars-Göran Ulander

Sedona, Arizona is home to a series of peculiar structures. To the layperson eye they are little more than cobbled together cairns slowly crumbling to dust. But to the local populace of crystal-wearing, chakra-obssessed mystics these stone piles are focal points, dots on a metaphysical map where spiritual energy pools in abundance and believers gain regular ingress to other states of consciousness. To the jazz fan the imperfect analogues are legendary clubs, venues where doyens stride the stage and make history as they build on the music night after night. The Village Vanguard, The Velvet Lounge, The Vortex, The Bimhaus, these are but a few. Thanks to the assiduous efforts of Ayler Records the Glenn Miller Café is earning a ranking among the number.

Jan Ström refers to the Café as the label’s “number one ‘studio’.” That’s no errant boast given that at least seven of the imprint’s releases to date were birthed within its walls. I can’t help pondering what the cafés supper club friendly namesake would have thought of much of the improv-centric music radiating from the stage. Whatever his possible opinion of the place, the incongruity often makes for some delightful irony; especially when ensembles like the Lars Göran Ulander Trio are the purveyors for an evening. In common with certain others on the Ayler roster including Anders Gahnold and Martin Küchen, Ulander represents relatively obscure surname to most non-European jazz listeners. His work on the Ayler-released Per Henrik Wallin compilation The Stockholm Tapes helped reverse the tide of American anonymity, but those recordings dated from the 70s. This recent one connotes his commercial debut as leader and presents a saxophonist still in possession of considerable creative skills.

Joining Ulander in the trio are two seemingly incongruous compatriots. My experience with Palle Danielsson is pretty much limited to his work on various ECM outings, mostly in the company of talented, but sometimes overly-sedate pianist Bobo Stenson. Paal Nilssen-Love frequently represents the other side of the coin, a powerhouse drummer comfortable in the company of Brötzmann and Gustafsson and one who a breaks a heavy beading sweat every time behind his kit. The two players meet beautifully in the middle between their respective poles, Danielssonn producing a full-bodied tensile thrum when it comes to pizzicato and Nilssen-Love favoring nuance as much as brawn in his myriad rhythms. Ulander trolls the lower regions of his alto, brushing the tenor range with a tone furrowed by emotive veracity.

“Tabula Raasa G.M.C.,” first of three lengthy collective improvisations, finds the three reaching a flexible consensus that sustains for nearly the entire set. The Mingusian anthem “What Love” serves as a fitting median piece. The leader engages Danielsson in a dialogue worthy of the source incarnations, mixing dialects of Dolphy and McLean in a continuation of a conference initiated on the earlier, enigmatically-titled “Intrinsic Structure I.” Sprawling in scope, “Ionizacion- Variaciones E.V.” borrows kernels from Varese’s epochal percussion ensemble piece and injects slivers of jazz time. All three tracks feature propulsion-packed, texture-stacked solos by Nilssen-Love. Ulander’s own “J.C. Drops” closes the concert and he shows an even stronger abiding influence of Art Pepper in his velocious, often piercing lines.

Add Ulander’s name to those of others like James Finn, Bill Gagliardi and Stephen Gauci, saxophonists of the far-better-late-than-never fraternity who are finally receiving some measure of their due. And thanks to the Glenn Miller Café, a venue slowly accruing legendary status, for help making it happen.

_ By DEREK TAYLOR

September 5, 2005 (Dusted)

Here you can buy ayler albums:

http://www.ayler.com/cd-catalogue.html

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JOE McPHEE and SURVIVAL UNIT II – At WBAI's Free Music Store, 1971 (CD / hat ART-1996)

Label: hat ART – hat ART CD 6197

Format: CD, Album, Limited Edition; Country: Switzerland - Released: 1996

Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation

Recorded At WBAI's Free Music Store, N.Y. N.Y., October 30, 1971.

Design Concept [Graphic Concept] – fuhrer vienna

Liner Notes – Chris Albertson, Joe McPhee

Liner Notes [Producers Note] – Werner X. Uehlinger

Mixed By [Mix], Mastered By [CD Master] – Peter Pfister

Photography By [Photo] – Ken Brunton

Producer – Pia And Werner X. Uehlinger

Recorded By – Chris Albertson

The Hat Art label (Werner X. Uehlinger) was formed in the mid-'70s partly to document the music of multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee. The tapes of this live concert, which was broadcast by the small New York radio station WBAI, were released for the first time on this 1996 CD. Doubling on tenor and trumpet, McPhee is joined by Clifford Thornton (heard on baritone horn and cornet), Byron Morris (on soprano and alto), pianist Mike Kull, and percussionist Harold E. Smith. Due to the passionate nature of much of this fairly free music and the use of Thornton's baritone horn, one does not really notice the absence of a string bass. The six lengthy pieces (which are sandwiched by somewhat stilted announcing) are full of fire but also have their quiet and lyrical moments. A strong all-around performance that should not have taken 25 years to release.

McPhee – the Poughkeepsie-based saxophonist/trumpeter/composer – came on the scene in the late 1960s and appeared on a now-reissued recording by his mentor Clifford Thornton (whose Gardens of Harlem is in desperate need of reissue, by the way). After a few releases on CJR (all now available on Atavistic’s Unheard Music Series), Uehlinger released McPhee’s Black Magic Man and the relationship has existed ever since, resulting in some of the finest improvised music of the period. The music – by McPhee on tenor and trumpet, Thornton on baritone horn, Byron Morris on soprano and alto, Mike Kull on piano, and Harold E. Smith on percussion – is hot and intense, coming straight from McPhee’s most fiery period. It features the core of McPhee’s repertory at the time, including the acetylene torch intensity of “Black Magic Man,” the declamatory “Nation Time” (where the horns blend with wonderful color), and the gorgeous ballad “Song for Lauren,” where McPhee really begins to establish his powerful lyric strain that would become so recognizable on later recordings. McPhee already sounds in full command of his horns – listen to his lovely trumpet intro to “Message from Denmark” – and the band sounds great too (the underrated Kull just crushes on “The Looking Glass I”). They’re at their most powerful on the intensely dark rise-and-fall of “Harriet,” an exceptional document of free improvisation from one of the music’s true masters.

_ By JASON BIVINS, 1996

hat Hut catalog:  http://www.hathut.com/home.html

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CLIFFORD THORNTON NEW ART ENSEMBLE – Freedom & Unity (Goody LP-1969)

Label: Goody – GY 30001, Goody – GY 30.001

Goody Series Vol. 1

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Unofficial Release

Country: France - Released: 1969

Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation

Recorded on July 22, 1967 at Sound City Studios in New York City.

(Track 2 - ''Babe's Dilemma'', bonus track, is not on the original release)

Engineer – Orville O'Brien

Liner Notes – Archie Shepp

Photography By – Philippe Gras

Producer [Serie Directed By] – Claude Delcloo, Jean Luc Young

For those who don't know better, the free jazz movement is considered a sharp break with the past heritage of the music. That really wasn't the case. As Albert Ayler and Archie Shepp hearkened back to field hollers and very basic folk forms, musicians like Clifford Thornton went in the opposite direction, building on the music of the sophisticates and expanding the possibilities for jazz. Listening to music with this much space in it, it might be hard for some listeners to hear the Mingus. But it's there. And because that's there, Ellington is here in heaping handfuls as well. Sure this stuff is rough in spots. But the myriad of tones this man uses to express himself keeps things interesting and alive — the bright clarion of cornet and trumpet, the somber, thoughtful vibes, and a rhythm section that embraces two bass players to keep things rooted. The leader plays valve trombone, an enormously flexible instrument that allows him to meld with a variety of moods and produce music at once heartachingly simple and brain-twistingly complex.

For those with open ears — and minds.

Trombonist/trumpeter Clifford Thornton, is a natural extension of the music of Ornette Coleman.

Recorded one day after John Coltrane’s funeral, this session features Trane sideman Jimmy Garrison on two tracks and Joe McPhee (playing trumpet) on three. Thornton, who rehearsed across the hall from Ornette’s trio, certainly was listening. His piano-less quintet and extended New Art Ensemble pursue Coleman’s breakthroughs in melody and rhythm with different instrumentation. They certainly prove that free principals can be applied to the vibes, as Karl Berger does here and on later recordings with Don Cherry. Alto saxophonist Sonny King (we should find out more about this guy) tears through songs bridging bebop and freedom principles.

Thornton’s valve trombone is the payday here. He floats lines, setting moods or barking replies to the cornet. Thornton’s trombone later recorded with Sunny Murray, Sun Ra and Archie Shepp. The liner notes point out he was denied a visa to enter France because they suspected him of belonging to the Black Panthers. His revolutionary music and self-produced LP’s received little attention in the mainstream press, as he had no access to distribute his music, and in the late 1960s and 1970s, American record companies were withdrawing their support of creative music. The Cecil Taylors, Anthony Braxtons and Joe McPhees of this world either became exiles or recorded for small foreign labels. Clifford Thornton moved to Europe and died in relative obscurity in the mid-80s. This document of significant music calls for further exploration of the ever-neglected free jazz past.

 _ By MARK CORROTO,

Published: November 1, 2001 (AAJ)

Originally issued on Third World Records in 1969 as Third World LP 9636.

http://www.restructures.net/Thornton/thornton_disco_home.htm

http://www.jazzdisco.org/clifford-thornton/discography/

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/JAZZ-LP-CLIFFORD-THORNTON-NEW-ART-ENSEMBLE-FREEDOM-UNITY-THIRD-WORLD-/181410145726

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DAVE BURRELL – After Love (LP-1970)

Label: America Records – 067 867-2

Series: Free America – #07

Format: CD, Album, Reissue, Remastered, Limited Edition - Released: 2004

Style: Free Jazz

Recording Date: 1970, Paris, France.

Art Direction, Design, Painting – Gilles Guerlet, Jérôme Witz

Photography By [Paintings] – Fredéric Thomas

Producer [For America-musidisc] – Pierre Berjot

Reissue Producer [Prepared For Reissue By] – Bruno Guermonprez

Supervised By [Reissue] – Daniel Richard

Transferred By [Transfers], Mastered By [Mastering] – Alexis Frenkel

Part of the reissue series of recordings from the French America label, this CD cleans up the sound from the original's horrible French pressing c. 1970 and holds up 44 years later as one of the best recordings of the free jazz diasporic period.

01 After Love Part 1 “Questions and Answers” (D. Burrell) . . . 21:42

02 After Love Part 2 “Random” (D. Burrell) . . . 7:03

03 My March (D. Burrell) . . . 22:03

Dave Burrell, leader, piano

Alan Silva, amplified cello, violin

Ron Miller, mandolin, bass (track 1)

Don Moye, drums

Bertrand Gauthier, drums (track 1)

Roscoe Mitchell, reeds

Michel Gladieux, bass (track 3)

When, in 1969, a young journalist named Paul Alessandrini proposed a series of “exspress Portraits” to Jean-Louis Ginibre, Chief Editor of “Jazz Magazine”, to be published under the title “The New Heads of the New Music”, Dave Burrell, aged 29, was probably the most discreet and apparently the most “serious” (no doubt because he wore glasses!) of the eleven musicians chosen. Musically - he’d already produced some phonographic evidence - this pianist was neither the least ‘turbulent’ nor, literally, the least iconoclastic. This was reason enough for him to have been selected among the whole ‘bunch’ of freejazzmen who’d just landed in Paris from New York and Chicago, and who immediately scattered throughout the capital’s studios and jazz clubs (not to mention other spaces, sometimes institutions, which had never heard as much…). A few jazz fans, and also professionals who were novices where ‘new jazz’ was concerned, but were excited by the scent of surprise inherent in this music, undertook the financial risks; after all, wasn’t their aim to sell this music that seemed to turn its back on most of the commercial criteria reigning over the music business? As for Burrell (no relation to guitarist Kenny Burrell, nor the New Orleans pianist Duke Burrell), if his biography remains extremely concise (are lucky musicians those without a story?), at least Alessandrini informed us that he ‘was born on September 10th, 1940 in Middletown, Ohio of parents originating in Mississippi and Louisiana. When he was still a child he lived in a musical atmosphere: his mother played piano and organ, and sang spirituals in a Baptist Church (Note: Baptist religious services were the most propitious in terms of musical paroxysms and collective trance phenomenal. His father, a union man, defended black workers rights. For four years he studied music at Berklee School of Music and at the Boston Conservatory, then for two years at the University of Hawaii.  He lived in the heart of the Black ghetto, in Cleveland and Harlem, while making frequent trips to the ‘paradise’ of Hawaii.  He recorded with Giuseppi Logan, Marion Brown (Juba-Lee, Three for Shepp). Pharoah Sanders (still spelt ‘Pharaoh’ at the time), (Tauhid), then under his own name for Douglas (High). Deeply marked by his recent stay in Algiers, he’s just recorded two compositions conceived over there, under the general title of ‘Echo’: with himself leading, there are Archie Shepp, Grachan Moncur, III , Sunny Murray, etc’ (In ‘Jazz magazine’ No. 171, October 1969). We would later learn that his name was actually Herman Davis Burrell III: that is was his mother who initiated him to jazz: that in Boston he sometimes played with the very young drummer Tony Williams and saxophonist Sam Rivers (two indispensable pioneers who later appeared in the Blue Note catalogue and then alongside Miles Davis); that in 1965, in New York, he’d formed the Untraditional Jazz Improvisational Team with Byard Lancaster (reeds), Sirone (bass), and Bobby Kapp (drums); that three years later with Moncur (trombone) and drummer Beaver Harris, he’d created a musical variable-geometry collective, the 360 Degree Music Experience, with the motto: ‘from ragtime to no time at all.” Such a stance of absolute openness is something that would cross the pianist composer’s entire output, from prime percussion to Giaccomo Puccini (he was indeed to tackle a re-reading of some of the great arias from ‘La Vie De Boheme’) with amongst other decisive moments, his sole physical contact with the African continent during the Algiers Pan-African festival. Like other pianist-composers, notably Sun Ra and Jaki Byard , Dave Burrell invented an approach for himself  which might be superficially qualified as ‘plural’, indeed ‘schizophrenic. Classical, traditional here, and unbridled, ‘free’ there… Like a kind of  Dr. Jekyll  & Mr. Hyde.  In fact, here as there (and as in Stevenson’s novel), it’s a question of one and the same being, the same ‘soul’, ensuring the indisputable continuity of this apparent stylistic patchwork. The continuum of which saxophonist Archie Shepp spoke not long ago, that Great Black Music returning to the words of the musicians in Chicago’s A.A.C.M. (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians), or again in all the music that exists, in the phrase of the Philadelphian Byard Lancaster, between ‘Sex machine (James brown) and ‘A Love Supreme’ (John Coltrane): such is the profound unity of the Burrell universe with, obviously, a whole range of singularities, ‘distinctive features’ with a juxtaposition and mingling of his taste for classical forms and virtuosities, notably with the piano’s African-American pioneers (ragtime, stride, boogie…), or, as in this ‘After Love’ for a March tempo that’s distended and distorted to anamorphosis and verbal explosions. This reminds us that these were joyous militant years, and that forbidding was still forbidden - even to mix the sounds of an electric cello, or a violin and a mandolin, to associate a multi-blower from Chicago (and The Art Ensemble’ Of…) Roscoe Mitchell, the Art Ensemble’s percussionist (Don Moye), a former partner of Cecil Taylor and Sun Ra (Alan Silva) with young Parisian rhythmicians (Michel Gladieux, who was part of the Dharma quintet, and Bertrand Gauthier, who dropped his sticks in favour of a camera), and therefore to play-enjoy without hindrance. Who mentioned nostalgia? It’s just a moment in history.

_ By Phillippe Carles

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DAVE BURRELL – High Won - High Two (2LP-1976)

Label: Arista – AL 1906, Freedom – AL 1906

Format: 2 × Vinyl, LP, Album; Country: US - Released: 1976

Style: Free Improvisation, Free Jazz

Recorded in New York City, 6th February 1968 except East Side Colors (9th September 1968)

Art Director – Bob Heimall

Artwork [Cover Art] – Benno Friedman

Design – Nancy Greenberg

Liner Notes – Stanley Crouch

Photography By – Raymond Ross

Producer – Alan Douglas

Producer [Additional Production] – Michael Cuscuna

"High Won-High Two" is the second studio album released by jazz pianist Dave Burrell. It was recorded on February 9, 1968 and was first released as an LP record later that year by Black Lion Records.

A  -  West Side Story (Medley) . . . 19:48

        (Arranged By – D. Burrell, Composed By – L. Bernstein)

B1 - Oozi Oozi . . . 3:11

B2 - Bittersweet Reminiscence . . . 3:45

B3 - Bobby And Si . . . 2:13

B4 - Dave Blue . . . 2:37

B5 - Margie Pargie (A.M. Rag) . . . 3:02

C  -  East Side Colors . . . 15:52

D  -  Theme Stream Medley . . . 15:35

        a. Dave Blue

        b. Bittersweet Reminiscence

        c. Bobby And Si

        d. Margie Pargie (A.M. Rag)

        e. Oozi Oozi

        f. Inside Ouch

DAVE BURRELL – Piano, Composed, Arranger

SIRONE (Norris Jones) – Bass

PHAROAH SANDERS – Tambourine

BOBBY KAPP – Drums (tracks: A to B5, D)

SUNNY MURRAY – Drums (track: C)

Dave Burrell has long been a favorite pianist for his remarkable ability to play across stylistic boundaries in jazz. After graduating from Berklee College of Music in 1965 with a degree in composition, arranging and performance, Burrell dedicated himself to the pursuit of creative music that combines his dual talents as composer and free jazz improviser, performing alongside artists such as Marion Brown, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders and David Murray. Few pianists have so successfully and consistently performed improvised music containing influences ranging from Jelly Roll Morton, Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington to classical composers such as Puccini—see Burrell's LP, "La Vie de Boheme" (BYG/Get Back Records, 1969) and this a front of you, Leonard Bernstein trio LP "High Won-High Two" (Douglas/Black Lion, 1968 - Arista/Freedom, 1976) with Sirone and Sunny Murray. His predecessor, pianist Jaki Byard was similarly able to seamlessly employ the entire history of jazz in a single solo with Charles Mingus' 1964 sextet...

... Dave Burrell has long had a highly original style on piano, not quite outside but far from conventional. This LP, a trio set with bassist Sirone and either Bobby Kapp or Sonny Murray on drums. Most intriguing is a 19½-minute "West Side Story Medley" that features Burrell playing many of the songs from Leonard Bernstein's work in abstract fashion. There is also the lengthy "East Side Colors," five brief (around three-minutes apiece) versions of five of Burrell's originals and the "Theme Stream Medley" which has reprises of the five songs plus a sixth piece ("Inside Ouch").

_ By Scott Yanow

Extremely good set.

If you find it, buy this album!