I didn't realize that DG had seized these recordings! That'd be Universal I guess? These recordings were all originally released on the small (French) Disques Adès and Vega labels, of course. Naturally DG forgot to mention that on their site ... Sound might not be DG standard (??). Matters not! Performances are mostly superb.
I'm happy to see that Pharoah Sanders is still kept in great consideration in the USA. In Italy it's not the same, he is quite completely forgotten and almost no one listens to his wonderful music.
Hmmmm, (another annexation of...) that's what the listing said. I shall investigate further but either way I need these performances.
PFM is known in Italy especially by prog lovers, but they consider only the first albums; the rest od Italians know them only for the two live LPs with Fabrizio De Andrè. Zu is a "niche" group, and if I can be honest I find them a bit overrated...
Prog rock In Italy and in the rest of Europe ends just after 1976 in connection with the birth of Punk Era. What happened to PFM or Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, New Trolls and so on is similar to the evolution or regression (that is matter of opinion ) of Genesis, Yes, EL&P... The old fans were blown away. Someone appreciated positively but the most did not it. I have never been a huge fan of prog suites aside KC was not taken back by the changes towards pop, however very nice for the most part of those groups.
Fortunately there were also progressive rock acts in the 70s, which did not turn into pop-rock entertainers after 1976. In Italy you had Opus Avantra, AreA, Picchio dal Pozzo, Stormy Six, Arti & Mestieri/Venegoni & Co... Not as famous and successful as Le Orme, PFM or Banco, but definitely not any worse. I'd even dare say these groups were actually more accomplished than their more prominent peers.
Une chanson pour @Jacline Ou est tu mon ami?! Art Farmer This track sounds like a piece of chocolate cake, so good and sweet.
Approaching his 80th year, I believe Pharoah's activity has become less frequent. I see only one gig on the horizon, in Portland Oregon in late February. I also believe that more of his concert activity over the past decade was in Europe, but I do not have a full log. He certainly has a cult following that collects tapes of virtually every live performance. My guess is that following is worldwide, but has a greater concentration in Europe. I have never heard a recorded interview with Pharoah. If one exists, I bet it was done in Europe. Has anyone heard one?
I agree with you. I distinguish between Italian prog bands most influenced by European classical music and groups like Area (even recorded with Steve Lacy and Paul Lytton), Stormy Six, Arti & Mestieri most influenced by Avant-garde jazz with a strongest political left-hand dimension. These groups refused the idea of entertainment. But it is also true that the most Italian fans of Prog Rock did not love much jazz, especially free or Avant-garde garde music. If you go on Italian forums, you still find a lot of Genesis fans who know everything about Gabriel, Banks, Hackett and so on, but unfortunately the bands that you told apart a little Area thanks to the charisma of the excellent vocalist Demetrio Stratos dead untimely in 1979 soon after leaving Area, are almost forgotten.
I think the trio has been lost to time a little bit and is under appreciated. The trio didn't work that much in its early years. It never recorded a straight studio album (the Who's Crazy stuff I think are the band's only studio recordings). And outside of the Golden Circle recordings I'm not sure how many of its live albums people have heard (there are two other official releases -- the Town Hall album, and my favorite, the Croydon show, but there are lots of unofficial releases from European shows in '65 and '66. The Town Hall set was supposed to have been released on Blue Note in the early '60s, and it was supposed to have been a two volume relase on Blue Note (apparently, according to the discographies, there were even BN catalog numbers assigned, BLP 4210 and 4211.) The show had the string group, the trio, and Ornette playing with Nappy Allen's R&B trio, kind of an Ornette 360 show, it would also have been interesting to hear that Nappy Allen stuff. But Blue Note never released it, it didn't arrive until 1965 and then not on Blue Note but on ESP, with its limited distribution, and we only ever got half the originally planned release -- there are five additional trio pieces and one R&B band piece listed in the discographies that have never been heard. With all the boutiquing and reissuing of "lost" and forgotten music by the giants, I have to assume if this material still existed, someone would have done a complete Town Hall release by now. I imagine if right after the end of the original quartet, a live twofer on Blue Note mostly featuring the trio, but presenting the whole scope of Colemen's music at the time had been released, people might still have found the music "out there" or something, but the image of the trio as people think and talk about Coleman might be more prominent today. The trio was such a great band -- like you say, Izenzon great, and really an original, Charles Moffet was no slouch either, he was just as much a hard swinging drummer as Higgins and Blackwell, but he was a little bit of a more open, new-thing player too, and we would work in little instruments. And the trio's repertoire was great, especially "Sadness," which is right up there with "Lonely Woman," as Coleman ballads go.
I have no clues about interviews, but I know he's much appreciated in Germany. In Italy his records (LPs) are very hard to find: It took a long time for me to build a decent collection...
Yeah, Area's free-improv set with Lacy and Lytton released as Event '76 stands as one of the boldest free-form improvisation statements in progressive rock's history, alongside Henry Cow's Trondheim '76 and Samla Mammas Manna's För äldre nybegynnare '77. Sadly most progheads rarely care for improvised stuff, while the progressive rock moniker usually turns off free-improv buffs, hence these recordings remain in a no-man's land frequented only by few music omnivores.
I just listened to Stanley Turrentine’s Jubilee Shout, prior to putting it on I was looking at and considering playing his Look Out! which I saw has Horace Parlan on piano, but at the last minute I put on Jubilee Shout without really looking at the cover or personnel in detail. As the first track was playing I was really digging the piano and, assuming the same rhythm section was on Jubilee as on Look Out, I found myself thinking “Wow, Horace Parlan is absolutely amazing!” After the first track was over I got up to flip the record and check the liner notes... it turned out that it is actually Sonny Clark on piano instead! (If you’re wondering why this is significant to me, I had just posted yesterday about starting to discover Sonny Clark and being blown away by his playing, so finding out that this pianist I was digging so much was actually him was a bit of a serendipitous moment for me).
