Tom Varner

The Tom Varner Quartet album puts the French horn of Tom Varner at the front of a band with alto saxophonist Ed Jackson, bassist Fred Hopkins and drummer Billy Hart. It was recorded in New York in August 1980 and released by Soul Note in 1981 as SN 1017. Varner wrote all five pieces and produced the session himself. With no piano or guitar in the line-up, the two horns carry the harmony between them over Hopkins and Hart.

The music was recorded at Sorcerer Sound on 29 August 1980 and mixed there on 20 September, with Mario Salvati as engineer and Giovanni Bonandrini as executive producer; Lee Jeske wrote the liner notes. The five compositions run between seven and a half and ten and a half minutes each, about 44 minutes in all. The Otter opens the record, followed by Radiator at just over eight minutes and 12 12. The two longest pieces close it: TV TV at ten minutes, and Heaps, at ten and a half. The cover photograph is by Vittorio Sacco, the back cover photographs by Carlo Verri and Lee Snider; design and art direction are credited to Pick Up Studios, and the sleeve carries Varner's thanks to his family.

Soul Note CD 121017-2, carrying ℗ and © 1981, the year the album first appeared on LP as SN 1017.