Muhal Richard Abrams

Spihumonesty is a septet record Muhal Richard Abrams made in New York in July 1979 for Black Saint, four of his compositions for a band of AACM colleagues, a singer and a theremin. Abrams was the first president of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, formed in Chicago on May 8, 1965, and had moved to New York in 1975. The record sits in his first years there, with electronics added to the ensemble: Abrams plays piano and synthesizer, and the theremin of Youseff Yancy is a rare colour in a jazz line-up of the period.

The band has Roscoe Mitchell on alto saxophone and flute, George Lewis on trombone, sousaphone and synthesizer, Amina Claudine Myers on piano, electric piano and organ, Leonard Jones on bass and Jay Clayton on voice. It was recorded at Big Apple Studios by Jim Jordan, with Lowdy Hui assisting, then mixed by Giancarlo Barigozzi, and produced by Giacomo Pellicciotti. The four pieces are Triverse, Inneroutersight, Unichange and the title track, each between six and a half and eight and a half minutes, about half an hour in all. Thom Holmes, writing about Yancy, notes that on one of the tracks the theremin enters only late, just after the five-minute mark.

This is the Black Saint CD 120032-2, which Discogs lists as a 1993 reissue of the album first released in 1980, with the four original pieces.