AAJ Review: Gary Burton, Seven Songs for Quartet and Chamber Orchestra

[jkelman]

My review of Gary Burton/Michael Gibbs' Seven Songs for Quartet and Chamber Orchestra, today at All About Jazz.

While there is still a handful of ECM titles from vibraphonist Gary Burton that remain unreleased on CD, perhaps the most unique of the bunch is Seven Songs for Quartet and Chamber Orchestra, originally issued by the German label in 1974 and the first of two collaborations with Zimbabwe-born, British-resident composer/pianist/trombonist Michael Gibbs. The similarly intriguing In the Public Interest (Polydor, 1974) is a more conventionally configured large ensemble with horns, reeds, piano, bass and drums; Seven Songs, on the other hand, remains the more unusual of the two, teaming Burton's quartet with members of Hamburg, Germany's NDR-Symphony Orchestra, performing music arranged, conducted and largely composed by Gibbs.

The result is an album unlike any other in Burton's recorded work, and that includes everything that's followed, right up to Guided Tour (Mack Avenue, 2013). Amidst Burton's lengthy discography (nearly sixty as a leader/co-leader and literally hundreds as a guest) his tenure with ECM—from his 1972 debut with Chick Corea on the classic Crystal Silence through to his 1987 swan song, Whiz Kids—remains some of the most experimental and compelling music of his career, with Seven Songs ranking alongside his pre-ECM classic collaboration with Carla Bley, A Genuine Tong Funeral (RCA, 1968), as his most forward-reaching and outré-thinking.

Continue reading here...

[FrippWire]

I'll be buying this when the reissue hits the streets. Gary Burton = autobuy.

[jkelman]

This coming Tuesday in the US; already out in Europe....just FYI....