Brit-Jazz and related
The Artchipel Orchestra, led by conductor / arranger Ferdinando Farao, is a Italian big band (over 20 participants) and Ferdinando is a big fan of the British jazz and jazz rock scene of the 70s, having previously covered tunes by Alan Gowen, Dave Stewart, Mike Westbrook & Fred Frith, among others.
Here, he's tackling the Soft Machine boo, but even though the title is "Play Soft Machine", a more accurate title would be "Plays Hugh Hopper's Tunes For Soft Machine", as that's what this mostly is....
The Artchipel Orchestra, led by conductor / arranger Ferdinando Farao, is a Italian big band (with 25 participants on this album) and Ferdinando is a big fan of the British jazz and jazz rock scene of the 70s, having previously covered tunes by Hugh Hopper, Alan Gowen, Robert Wyatt, Dave Stewart, Mike Westbrook & Fred Frith, among others.
For this, their third album, he has chosen to highlight the compositions of the late Lindsay Cooper. They band perform:
1. Half The Sky (from "Western Culture").
"Although this album contains a varied selection of material, including one original composition and three tracks from a 1998 Mike Westbrook project, I'm just going to write just a few words about what seems, at the moment, to be at the core of this great orchestra's repertoire: namely, some classic British jazz-rock from the 1970s. This music was always on the margins, of course, even at the time. Back when I was a schoolboy, most of my friends were listening to soul, blues, punk, disco, heavy metal...
Graham Collier - bass
Harry Beckett - trumpet, flugelhorn
Ted Curson - trumpet, piccolo trumpet
Nick Evans & John Mumford - trombones
Tony Roberts - tenor sax, bass clarinet, flute
Stan Sulzmann - alto sax, tenor sax, flute
Karl Jenkins - oboe, soprano sax, baritone sax, piano
Pierre Cavalli - guitar
John Marshall - drums
Recorded live in Hamburg, 6th December 1968. Previously unreleased.
“Composer/bassist, Graham Collier’s career was litte
“Previously unreleased recordings by various line-ups drawn from Derek Bailey, Tristan Honsinger, Christine Jeffrey, Toshinori Kondo, Charlie Morrow, David Toop, Maarten Altena, Georgie Born, Lindsay Cooper, Steve Lacy, Radu Malfatti, and Jamie Muir.
Journalists often make the brief history of free improvisation conform to the idea that the history of music is a nice straight line from past to present: Beethoven... Brahms... Boulez. Thus Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, and John Stevens -- together...