Shankar, Garbarek, Hussain, Gurtu - Song For Everyone (1985)

As noted last week, Jan Garbarek and Zakir Hussain's first collaboration was back in September 1984 and the recording sessions for this album.  Song For Everyone was captained (and wholly written) by Tamil violinist Lakshminarayana Shankar, who was on his third outing with ECM (the first had featured Hussain, the second Garbarek).  Completing this lineup was percussionist Trilok Gurtu, who'd made appearances on the label back to the late 70s.

Album opener Paper Nut, which Garbarek would return to for several years afterwards, kicks into high gear with a flurry of Shankar's electrified strings and a drum machine backing.  The longest track, Watching You, is in a similar vein, with pieces based on more traditional percussion interspersed.  Garbarek is in fine form throughout, carrying a warm breeze through the lovely title track and proving an ideal melodic/harmonic sparring partner with Shankar elsewhere.  Drum machine tracks aside, the two percussionists are a wonderful base for a great album.

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BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Ilan Volkov - Zappa, Anderson, Ives (2018)

A concert recording from the Glasgow City Halls a year and a half ago, which I picked up when it was given a recent re-broadcast.  The focus on Zappa for the promotional material (like the image above) might seem a bit off-target when you realise his music only takes up the first 13 minutes of the concert, but regardless, it's great to hear The Perfect Stranger performed live.  Originally conducted by Pierre Boulez for the album of the same name in 1984, the evocation of a sleazy vacuum cleaner salesman is in good hands with Ilan Volkov and the BBC SSO.

So what music would be ideal to pair with Zappa, to make up the main meat of a concert?  Varèse might be the obvious thought, but here we get Charles Ives' New England Holidays, which is also a great choice.  Written over a few years as four individual pieces, the movements are intended to evoke memories of childhood holidays, and do so in grand style.  Programmed in between Zappa and Ives is British composer Julian Anderson's piano concerto The Imaginary Museum, which the SSO/Volkov originally premiered in 2017.  Written as a virtual world tour, it sounds fantastic and makes me want to hear more by Anderson.  More Ives coming next week.

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Zakir Hussain - Making Music (1987)

This post starts with a thankyou to commenter Doug who jogged my memory about this album, back when I posted the Hariprasad Chaurasia album.  Not sure why I'd let this gorgeous recording from December 1986 sit on the shelf for so long - perhaps it didn't catch my mood when I first picked it up.  In any case, here's one of the vast collection of ECM experiments when a handful of musicians came together and struck gold.

Indian percussionist Zakir Hussain had already worked with Jan Garbarek a couple of years prior to this session (that's coming next week), and Hussain and Chaurasia had also collaborated on more traditional Indian music.  Completing the lineup was John McLaughlin, playing understated acoustic guitar throughout.  After the lengthy title track introduces everyone, some tracks highlight the musicians in pairs or trios and Chaurasia's sublime flute sounds take a starring role almost everywhere they appear.  Garbarek gets a wonderful feature on Anisa, followed by a Hussain solo, and McLaughlin's fleet fingers are highlighted on the all too brief You And Me.  One of the most underrated ECM treasures, not least by me up until now.

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Tim Story - Glass Green (1987)

A few years down the line from their beginnings in solo instrumental music (see links below), Windham Hill began to diversify into more New Agey world music, jazz fusion, and ambient loveliness like today's post.  So to complete my collection from the label for now, here's the Windham Hill debut (he'd stay for one more release) by Philly-born ambient composer Tim Story.

Glass Green is a fitting album title for this kind of music: bright but diffuse, and beautifully melodic whilst staying on the right side of sacchrine.  It sounds quite digital; Story's hardware used on the record isn't specified, but well employed across ten atmospheric sketches that sometimes bring to mind the Eno & Budd collaborations.  It's also occasionally reminscent of Roedelius from a similar era, someone Story would go on to collaborate with (that's coming up in a week or two), as well as working with Moebius just before the latter's death.

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Windham Hill at SGTG:
Piano Solos | Autumn | December (George Winston)
Solid Colors | Unaccountable Effect (Liz Story)
Southern Exposure (Alex De Grassi)
Breakfast In The Field | Aerial Boundaries (Michael Hedges)
An Evening With Windham Hill Live (Various Artists)

Iannis Xenakis, David Del Tredici, Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, George Crumb (2014 compi rec. 1965-78)

Great compilation put together by Sony Classical as part of their "Prophets Of The New" reissue series in 2013/14.  Much of the series was also released as a "Masterworks Of The 20th Century" budget box set, a chunk of which has already been posted here - Boulez, Extended Voices, Columbia-Princeton, Crumb, Partch, and Takemitsu.  More to come in due course - I may as well finish the box.

In contrast to the ones above that reissued those landmark LPs in their entireity, this collection picks highlights from three different records.  Firstly we get half of a 1969 album by the Festival Chamber Ensemble under Richard Dufallo, starting with Xenakis' Akrata - I think I prefer this one to the EIDMC Du Paris/Simonovich version, it's got a bit more oomph to it.  Then there's 24 engrossing minutes of David Del Tredici's Syzygy, with soprano and ensemble all over the shop in a setting of James Joyce's Ecce Puer.

Next up is side two of "Electronics & Percussion - Five Realizations By Max Neuhaus" released in 1968.  Stockhausen's Zyklus is scored for a solo percussionist playing multiple instruments, and notated in a spiral so that the player can start anywhere.  The ear-shredding John Cage noisefest Fontana Mix-Feed ("realized 1965") has previously featured here alongside an album's worth of other realizations of it by Neuhaus.  Closing the compilation is a typically bewitching and gorgeous George Crumb piece taken from a 1978 LP.  Lux Aeterna For Five Masked Musicians is scored for soprano, sitar, bass flute/recorder and two percussionists, and as always, makes me want to dig deeper into Crumb.  (More of him at SGTG here and here, plus link in first para above.)

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P.S. whilst reading about Max Neuhaus, I discovered his amazing Radio Net project from 1977 - well worth a listen.  Read about it and d/l the two hours of audio (192 kbps, but hey ho, fine for an old radio tape) here.

Lee Konitz, Miles Davis et al - Conception (1956 compilation, rec. 1949-51)

R.I.P. Lee Konitz, 13 October 1927 - 15 April 2020

The legendary saxophonist Lee Konitz has died at the age of 92, from Covid-related pneumonia.  He was the last surviving member of Miles Davis' Birth Of The Cool band, and had a storied career in his own right as a distinctive, melodic player and improviser.

This great collection was issued by Prestige in 1956 to bring together some 78rpm sides and material from 10" LPs.  The first six tracks in fact are the entirety of "The New Sounds" by "Lee Konitz featuring Miles Davis", a 10" released in 1951.  All of it essential early cool jazz and bop.

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Morton Feldman - String Quartet (1994)

From zen for piano last Friday, to zen for strings today.  The last decade of Morton Feldman's life saw him turn to mostly chamber music, hushed dynamics, and increasingly lengthy works.  String Quartet was written in 1979, and recorded for the first time in January 1993 by The Group For Contemporary Music.  The piece might have filled an entire CD with a minute to spare, but it's still about four and a half hours shorter than Feldman's String Quartet II.  One to get lost in for sure, as glowing pulses of sound are occasionally broken up by choppier timbres, and Feldman's modular form of writing periodically reprises little figures with subtle development.

Alternate cover (Naxos reissue, 2006)

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Piano and String Quartet
Durations/Coptic Light
Rothko Chapel
Two short pieces on Extended Voices

Dollar Brand - African Space Program (1974)

A heady, ambitious and joyous blast of large-group arranging and playing from South African jazz legend Dollar Brand.  Known as Abdullah Ibrahim since his late 60s conversion to Islam, Dollar Brand was still the name that appeared on his albums up until about the mid 70s, after he took a trip back to South Africa (having lived in New York for some time) and produced some of his most enduring music there.

This album comes just before that period, and was recorded in NYC in November 1973.  Brand's writing and arrangements in the two-part Tintiyana evoke Ellington and Mingus, firstly in bold, colourful layers, then settling into a blues groove that absolutely cooks.  The rest of the album is taken up by the 23-minute Jabulani - Easter Joy, with an initial theme that (presumably accidentally, but who knows given the 'Easter' theme) brings to mind 'Jesus Christ, Superstar' before launching into a ferocious free-for-all.  It's an exhilarating wild ride that doesn't start to cool down until about 15 minutes in, and the perfect closer to a great record.

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Philip Glass - Solo Piano (1989)

Been getting majorly reacquainted with this album of sublime, beautifully relaxing piano over the last few weeks, so it's well due a posting.  Just composer and instrument, nothing else.  Half an hour of gradually evolving meditations on Kafka, with some themes from his Thin Blue Line soundtrack.  Thirteen minutes of achingly gorgeous flowing waves originally written as an organ piece for the Dalai Lama's visit to New York City in 1981.  Then seven minutes of gospel-inflected loveliness written in collaboration with Allen Ginsberg (the version with his voice would appear the following year, on Hydrogen Jukebox).  I could listen to this album forever.

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Music With Changing Parts
Two Pages, Contrary Motion etc
Music In Twelve Parts
Einstein On The Beach
Dance Nos. 1-5
Dance No. 4 (Christopher Bowers-Broadbent)
How Now, etc (Steffen Schleiermacher)
Glassworks (live 2017)
Symphony No. 3 (live 2020)

Michael Hedges - Breakfast In The Field (1981)

The discography of acoustic guitar virtuoso Michael Hedges might have been tragically cut short after sixteen years, but it contained some sublime music.  It all began here, after Windham Hill boss William Ackerman discovered Hedges playing in a coffee shop and offered him a deal immediately.  It's an interestingly low-key start for someone of Hedges' jaw-dropping talent, especially in the laidback pair of opening tracks.  The reverbed production of Aerial Boundaries hadn't been intergrated into Hedges' sound yet, making Breakfast In The Field a showcase of his raw sound that still resonates.

And with just that guitar technique front and centre (barring backup cameos from Windham Hill mainstays Michael Manring on bass and George Winston on piano), it becomes apparent as the record progresses just how much the label had struck gold with their new signing.  The album consists of mostly brief pieces, delightful little miniatures of skill and melodic sensibility, like the atmospheric title track or the nightclub down the street-inspired Funky Avocado.  The most drawn-out track is the almost five minutes of Two Days Old, another gorgeous highlight of an essential album.  A major talent had arrived, in the most understated, unpretentious way possible.

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Aerial Boundaries
An Evening With Windham Hill Live

Krzysztof Penderecki - Emanationen, Partita, Cello Concerto, Symphony (1995 compilation, rec. 1972/3)

Following on from last Monday's post, a further tribute to Krzysztof Pendercki after his recent death.  This compilation from the 90s, like the second of the 'previously posted' links below, pulled together the composer-conducted recordings made for EMI in the early 70s.  On this one are four of Pendercki's slightly less famous but no less engrossing and distinctive works for orchestra.

First up is Emanationen, one of Pendercki's early works composed in 1958.  Two orchestras tuned a minor second apart generate a queasy churn that hints at the extremities to come in the 1960s.  The next two works are concertante, firstly Partita for harpsichord and chamber orchestra.  This was the 1972 premiere recording with harpsichordist Felicja Blumental (it was written the previous year); the instrument's spidery rattling sits well with parts for electric guitar and bass guitar.

Cello Concerto No. 1 was originally written in 1967 as a rare feature for the five-string violino grande, and was transcribed into a cello concerto five years later.  The legendary Siegfried Palm ably takes the lead part to its dark, violent depths and screeching heights - you can imagine a young Iancu Dumitrescu taking notes.  Closing the collection is Penderecki's first Symphony, commissioned in 1972 by, of all things, an English gas-engine manufacturing company (they were involved in a series of Annual Industrial Concerts).  It aptly starts out sounding like some unearthly mechanical device sputtering into life, before going deep into atmospheric soundworlds that only Penderecki could conjure up.

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Previously posted at SGTG:
St Luke Passion, Threnody etc (Polskie Nagrania Muza recordings)
Threnody, etc (EMI recordings)
Symphony No. 2
Utrenja

Herbert F. Bairy - Traumspiel (1979)

Ferdinand Försch, born 1951 in Bad Brückenau, Bavaria, is a sound sculptor who released only one album under his Herbert F. Bairy alias in 1979.  Elements of progressive rock, jazz rock, classical, world music and more all combined into what the liner notes, explaining the "dream game" title, described as "...four musical playgrounds.  The listening dreamer may find his own music in it."

I'm hearing some mid-late 70s Popol Vuh reference points here, particularly in the two longest tracks, with perhaps the hypnotic spiritual minimalism of Fricke's sound world toned down into something a little more conventionally prog, but no less fascinating and worthy of repeat immersion.  Some common ground with "ethnic fusion"-style bands like Between as well.  I actually hovered over the 'krautrock' tag for this post, before deciding it was a bit of a stretch.... maybe if it had been released a few years earlier, and was more improvisatory in nature.

Whatever it is, Traumspiel is a wonderful record, fleshed out at various points by a dozen other musicians.  Wordless voices, lysergic lead guitars, piano & synth, cello, tablas... you name it.  The second track, Runnin', has a definite jazz fusion influence to it, before the almost 15 minutes of Lady Ollala combine eerie drones, lead guitar & acoustic, synths, bells and more for what's probably the highlight of the album.  A definite cult classic.

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Hariprasad Chaurasia - Fabulous Flute Of Hariprasad Chaurasia (1985)

Meditative, ultra-chilled ragas from bansuri (bamboo flute) master Hariprasad Chaurasia, who was born in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh in 1938.  I've had this on heavy rotation since chancing across it a month ago, and it's a beautifully relaxing 45 minutes that takes in two ragas and a folk tune as a brief closer.  Raga Chandra Kauns is "an evening melody of romantic mood", and the more uptempo Raga Manj Khamaj is "a melody of the night".  Enjoy at those or at any times of day and be transported.

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