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Best of 2020

Don Cherry, Terry Riley

Universal Silence / Duo (2CD bundle)

Label: Lepo Glasbo, B.Free

Format: 2CD in bundle

Genre: Jazz

Out of stock

This special bundle collects the CD reissues of Don Cherry's Universal Silence and his collaboration with Terry Riley in Duo:

Don Cherry "Universal Silence" (1972)

What can be said about Don Cherry that hasn’t been said? He was a musical bridge between countless cultures - a titan of the avant-garde and jazz - one of the great, visionary voices of 20th century music for whom there was, and remains, no equivalent. A giant. Like Miles, Ayler, Mingus, Bird, Dizzy, Trane, Ornette, and Pharaoh, the power of his voice carved such a deep path that, more than half a century after he first emerged on the scene, you can still fear the earth shake.

With this in hand, from the vaults of WDR Köln, we’re overjoyed to announce the official release on CD of Cherry’s Universal Silence suite in six parts, recorded live at the Philharmonie Berlin on November 3, 1972, backed the all-star line up of Dollar Brand on Piano and Vocals and Carlos Ward on Alto Sax and Vocals. Fully remastered from the original master tape master and issued by the new imprint, Lepo Glasbo, this is a truly rare event. Album releases don’t get more historically important that this!

Don Cherry shot from the gate - a musical prodigy who could bend his horn to any idea or force of will. Barely into his 20’s, he joined the seminal band which laid the foundation for free jazz, led by Ornette Coleman - through multiple line-ups, collaborating on the jazz titan’s first 9 LPs (and later returning for many more). In 1963 he ventured out on his own, working with Steve Lacy, Sonny Rollins, within the New York Contemporary 5 (Cherry, John Tchicai, Don Moore, J.C. Moses, and Archie Shepp), John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, and numerous others, until 1966, when he released his first LP as a leader, Complete Communion, for Blue Note - the first of an astounding body of work which would emerge over the decades, until his untimely passing in 1995. 

Cherry’s work as a leader has numerous stages, but a great many of the high point fall within a surprisingly brief and prolific period which extends from the release of Mu - the first entry in the legendary Jazz Actuel series for BYG, in 1969, until Brown Rice in 1975. He was on fire - continuously creating visionary, often radically varied music which repeatedly changed the landscape of jazz. A rare entry from the period which gave us Eternal Rhythm, Orient, Organic Music Society, Relativity Suite, Eternal Now, and Blue Lake, now comes Universal Silence - a stunning piece of work extending across the album, recorded live in Berlin on November 3, 1972, and never officially released. It encounters Cherry playing in a short lived trio which lasted only an handful of dates - making the unique interplay established with legendary players, Dollar Brand and Carlos Ward, also captured on 1974’s The Third World Underground (recorded only 11 days later), that much more important and rare.

Cherry, Brand, and Ward would all continue to work together in different configurations and groups over the coming decades, but what emerges across Universal Silence is relatively unique - three tonal player, rushed with joy, without a rhythm section, filling in all the angles and beats themselves. Shifting from simple song, slow chant, to wild full on, hard blown frantic fire, this is free jazz like only Cherry, one of its true innovators, could unleash - tense as hell, yet remarkable natural and filled with ease. More than 45 years after it fell onto the tape, it’s an incredible thing to behold - like a wound up rubber band transformed into wind. What free improvising is all about. 

This is definitely one of the most precious CDs released in the first half of 2020, and it's hard to express how excited we are about it. As essential as they come! Issued in a deluxe digipack edition with 12-page booklet beautiful gatefold cover, it offers 10 pieces of incredible music from this short lived super-group. 

Don Cherry, Terry Riley "Duo" (1975)

Another incredible treasure from the vaults of Cologne radio, recorded in late February 1975. In this duo improvisation Terry Riley's organ intersections just define the geometry of the hyper-dimensional space where Don Cherry's outwordly trumpet lives. Mantric and evocative, we could go on and on listening to the very same track all day long, it could last forever...

In 1975, pioneering minimalist composer Terry Riley and jazz trumpet cosmonaut Don Cherry joined forces for a magnetic performance in Köln, Germany. But they also recorded these incredible radio sessions: Riley’s swirling organ, droning and clairvoyant, and prescient in its clarity, parades along with a triumphant Cherry, leaving behind trails of mystery and a sense of beauty in a larger, more universal form.

The opening piece, Descending Moonshine Dervishes, which lasts 32 minutes, is a transcendent moment of improvisational experimentation and spiritual jazz. As Cherry’s physical presence slowly liquifies, the lonesome foghorn blows into some kind of misty dawn. Then Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector follows the compositional model Riley had created earlier with his famous minimalist masterpiece In C from 1964.

If any music was to represent quantum void, Terry Riley's multi-layered organ patterns are definitely the most suitable candidate. They constitute a steady, everchanging background which is always and never the same at the same time, with epiphanic particles rising from the fluctuation and disappearing immediately after, just to reappear where you'd never have expected them to.

This meeting between Terry Riley’s amazing all-night-flight organ styles and Cherry’s devotional trumpet work, is a staggering document and another fascinating uncovering of a key moment in the secret history of holy minimalism.

Details
Cat. number: LG001 / BE 6212
Year: 2020