The spirit of Don Cherry soars again with the first‑ever official reissue of Blue Lake, a transcendent live set originally released in 1974 only in Japan and long out of print. Presented by Charly Records and BYG Records, this deluxe 2LP gatefold edition has been fully restored and remastered from the original master tapes, bringing back to life one of the rarest treasures in the avant‑jazz canon - a record that has fetched hundreds of dollars on the collector market for decades.
Recorded live in Paris on April 22, 1971, the performance captures Cherry at his creative zenith, alongside South African bassist Johnny Dyani and Turkish percussionist Okay Temiz. The trio moves like a living organism - fluid, spontaneous and deeply spiritual, threading together musical languages from multiple continents without ever lapsing into shallow exoticism. The opening piece, "Blue Lake," finds Cherry on flute, channeling Native American inflections that blend seamlessly with Far‑Eastern tonalities. His playing is lyrical yet restless, tracing long, breath‑driven phrases that seem to rise and fall like wind across open land. Dyani's bass anchors the music with a deep, woody presence, shifting between melodic counter‑lines and rhythmic propulsion, while Temiz's percussion weaves intricate, dancing patterns that pull from Turkish folk traditions, African polyrhythms and the free‑time sensibility of the European avant‑garde.
The two extended compositions that follow stretch past the twenty‑five‑minute mark each, becoming sprawling journeys of rhythm and resonance rich with cross‑cultural dialogue and ecstatic improvisation. These pieces don't unfold as conventional head‑solo‑head vehicles but as organic evolutions, with themes surfacing, dissolving and re‑emerging in altered forms. Cherry moves between pocket trumpet and various flutes and small instruments, constantly shifting the trio's timbral centre. Dyani's arco playing brings singing, almost vocal textures into the mix, while his pizzicato lines can suddenly lock into hypnotic ostinatos that give the music a trance‑like undertow. Temiz responds with a vast array of percussive colours - frame drums, bells, shakers, hand percussion - creating a sonic landscape that feels simultaneously ancient and utterly contemporary.
What makes Blue Lake so compelling more than fifty years on is how fully Cherry and his collaborators embody the music's universalist vision without sacrificing edge or intensity. This is not smooth "world fusion" designed for easy consumption; it's a rigorous, demanding and ultimately ecstatic exploration of what happens when musicians listen deeply across cultural lines and allow those influences to interact on equal footing. The spirituality that runs through the performance is not grafted on as atmosphere but built into the very structure of the improvisation: the way rhythms spiral and repeat, the way melodies bend and stretch, the way silence and space are honored as much as sound.
This deluxe reissue comes housed in a beautiful gatefold sleeve and features new, in‑depth liner notes by acclaimed jazz writer Kevin Le Gendre, offering fresh insight into Cherry's universal musical philosophy and the specific historical context of this Paris concert. For collectors who have chased the Japanese original for years, this edition represents a chance to finally hear the music with the clarity and presence it deserves. For newer listeners, it's an essential entry point into Cherry's post‑Ornette period, when he was actively reimagining what jazz could be by weaving it into a larger tapestry of global sound. Blue Lake stands as one of the defining documents of that vision - a record where borders truly dissolve and the music, as Cherry always insisted, belongs to everyone.
