Just when we thought the truly incredible releases that have already appeared across the early months of 2026 couldn't possibly be topped, the Los Angeles based imprint, The Village, delivers 'Live at Widney High December 26th, 1971', an astounding double LP, comprising a never before released live performance by Horace Tapscott and the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra. Capturing the group seven years before their first album was released, offering a rare window into their activities - deeply embedded community based action - during this period, these incredible four sides are made remarkably unique within the Tapscott / PAPA catalog through their renditions of Pharoah Sanders' "The Creator Has A Master Plan”, John Coltrane's "Equinox”, and the African American spiritual, “Motherless Child”, in addition to pieces by their recently lost member Herbert Baker, imbuing each moment of the concert with profound emotive depth. Not only is this one of the most compelling and sonically captivating bodies of real-time creativity that we've heard in years, it's quite possibly one of the greatest documents ever released of this group at their height.

For nearly four decades, the pianist, composer, and improviser, Horace Tapscott and the remarkably talented musicians who made up his Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, labored in the shadows with very few beyond the confines of Los Angeles, where they were based, taking note. Despite being one of the most talented figures to emerge within the context of American music during the post-war period, Tapscott largely abstained from engagement with the standard architectures surrounding music of his time, choosing to release his music on the tiny, local imprint, Nimbus West, and playing gigs in less conventional venues that engaged the communities within which he and the Arkestra lived and worked. Well past his death in 1999, even dedicated fans of free and spiritual jazz who were aware of his efforts struggled to find and access it. Thankfully, in recent years this has begun to change through a number of reissue initiatives and deep dives into his archives that have resulted in incredible archival releases, offering newly activated access to the incredible sounds that he and his collaborators produced. The latest of these - 'Live at Widney High December 26th, 1971' - stands as one of the most striking to date. A near perfect illumination of the complex sociocultural dynamics at play within Tapscott and the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra’s efforts through both its location - intimate community engagement via performance at a local high school - and its contents, looking far afield through renditions of Pharoah Sanders' spiritual jazz anthem "The Creator Has A Master Plan”, John Coltrane's "Equinox”, and the African American spiritual, “Motherless Child”, the album’s five tracks not only comprise some of the most engrossing music we’ve encountered from this band, but also, hands down, some of the best spiritual jazz of its moment. From the first hypnotic pulse issued by Tapscott’s hands, falling upon the keys, giving way to thick lyrical lines and rhythms delivered by the band, this one spins you around, captivating the heart and mind, levying a potent reminder of the power of music at its best.

The Los Angeles-based pianist, band leader, and composer, Horace Tapscott, was a visionary of the highest order. Initially beginning his career as a trombonist before switching to piano - playing with Frank Morgan, Don Cherry, and Billy Higgins while still in his teens - before fully launching his career in Lionel Hampton’s band during the late 50s and early 60s. Tapscott remained one of the unsung giants of jazz; a gifted composer, arranger, and educator, as well as a remarkably original pianist and bandleader, gaining note for his brilliant debut as a leader, ‘The Giant Is Awakened’, issued by Flying Dutchman, in 1969, as well as his arrangements on Sonny Criss's astounding and monumental 1968 LP 'Sonny's Dream’. But, even before those accomplishments Tapscott had begun to withdraw from mainstream jazz, founding, in 1961, the Underground Musicians Association (UGMA) - which morphed into the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra roughly a decade later and would remain his primary vehicle for creation until his passing in 1999.

For the entirety of their run together, Tapscott and his Arkestra were among the most important groups working in the United States, featuring hundreds of talented voices within its ranks: Arthur Blythe, Azar Lawrence, Jimmy Woods, John Carter, Bobby Bradford, Sonny Criss, Ndugu Chancler, Nate Morgan, Jesse Sharps, Adele Sebastian, Dadisi Komolafe, Gary Bias, to mention only a few. They were also among the most under-appreciated: a tour de force of sound, seeded by social, political, and community-based action. Still active today, the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra was and remains a radical band, creating revolutionary music, channeling Afrocentric and self-determinist philosophies, conceived as a community band that lived communally. In Tapscott’s own words, the project hoped to act as ‘a cultural safe house for the music.’ - an Ark, stating, “This is your music. This is black music,… a panorama of the whole thing right here”. Playing fundraisers, organizing teach-ins and workshops for young and old, all the while integrating their efforts with radical theatre groups and poets, political revolutionaries, Black separatists, community groups and churches, it drew on its own culture and the immediate community from surrounding Los Angeles neighborhoods for talent and creative inspiration, producing a totality of sound and action that has few equivalents in the history of American music.

Like Sun Ra, from whom he borrowed when naming his own Arkestra, and Kelan Phil Cohran working during the same period in Chicago, Tapscott showed deep dedication to possibilities and inclusiveness presented by working in large ensembles. Attempting to remain as free from the restrictions of the white run music industry, the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra only began to formally release recordings of their efforts toward the end of the 1970s - always placing community work and political consciousness at the heart of the project, preferring to play in the street, parks and coffee houses, over traditional venues. Capturing the group the better part of a decade before their first release on Nimbus would appear, ‘Live at Widney High December 26th, 1971’ offers an unprecedented window into what this group was all about and how truly remarkable they were before anyone outside their own immediate community was able to hear their truly thrilling sounds.

Recorded at Widney Career Preparatory & Transition Center, a special-education magnet high school in Los Angeles, ‘Live at Widney High December 26th, 1971’ feels pointed in its positioning on the calendar. Not only does this recording capture the band playing on a Sunday, but also the day after Christmas, revealing priorities and the ethos of the band alike. This concert draws the ear into the heart of a regular series of free weekend concerts that made up the core of the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra’s activities between 1970 and 1972 that often found them sharing the bill with John Carter and Bobby Bradford's group, as well as, in one instance, Sun Ra’s legendary Arkestra. On this particular day, the PAPA featured Tapscott on piano, David Bryant and Richard Herrera on bass, Ernest Cojoe on percussion, Everett Brown Jr on drums, Al Collins on tenor saxophone, Lawrence Douglas (Butch) Morris and Walter Graham on trumpet, Lorenzo Gardman and Lester Robertson on trombone, and Kamau Daáood and Linda Hill on vocals.

Unlike most recordings attending to Tapscott and the Arkestra’s efforts, which tend to favor original compositions by the band-leader and the group’s members, the majority of the set featured across the four sides of ‘Live at Widney High December 26th, 1971’ encounters them embracing renditions of three works from outside of the group: Pharoah Sanders' spiritual jazz anthem "The Creator Has A Master Plan”, John Coltrane's "Equinox”, and the African American spiritual, “Motherless Child”, as well as a medley of two compositions by Herbert Baker, one of the Arkestra's young pianists who died in a car accident at age 17.

Launching into action with ‘Equinox’, a track that originally entered the public consciousness in 1964 on the second side of John Coltrane’s seminal LP for Atlantic, ‘Coltrane's Sound’, the group’s singularity and transportive abilities immediately come to the fore, imbuing it with a density through the scale of the group, and continuously pushing its soaring lyrical lines and pulsing rhythms, across more than 25 minutes, the outer reaches, somewhere at the delicate boundary between free and spiritual jazz. Across every moment, Tapscott’s incredible skill as a leader and an arranger bear fruit, retaining a deep sense of respect for Coltrane’s original composition, while also making it the group’s own. If this LP featured this track alone - a monumentally thrilling and engrossing sonic experience - the album would still carry more than its weight in gold.

Embracing a similar, long-form approach, the album’s second side is offered in its entirety to an astounding rendition of the African American spiritual, ‘Motherless Child’ - popularized by artists like Mahalia Jackson, Odetta, Richie Havens, Tina Turner, and O.V. Wright, among numerous others - sung by Linda Hill. Delicate, intimate, and deeply moving, the fragility and power conveyed by Hill’s voice brings something to the song that few others ever have: a fact that will unlikely be surprising for anyone aware of her lone solo LP, ‘Lullaby For Linda’, or her other work with the Arkestra, within which she was regarded as the central matriarch. Yet, even here, despite the centrality of Hill’s contribution, we’re reminded that this is a wholly collective effort as the group pushes forward and stretches out, transforming the piece into a chugging, immersive spiritual jazz number of meaningful celebration and joy, drawing upon its deep roots at the end of slavery, while pointing toward glorious accomplishments and future unknowns.

In what has already proven to be nearly an hour of truly astounding music, on the first side of the second LP that comprises ‘Live at Widney High December 26th, 1971’, Tapscott and the Arkestra up the ante once more with a stunning rendition of Pharoah Sanders' ‘The Creator Has A Master Plan’, taken from his 1969 LP ‘Karma’. Here, once again, the day on which the Arkestra’s concert was staged - the Sunday following Christmas - feels especially relevant through conscious choice. Sanders' original drew in equal parts from African American and Eastern musical traditions, nodding toward new and alternate spiritual journeys for his culture. No less profound, with Linda Hill behind the microphone once again, Tapscott and the Arkestra follow a slightly different path into the piece’s core. Rather than the dense harmonics and shimmering sonorities that marked Sanders’ original rendition, the group imbues it with funk, soul, and swagger, producing a slow, foot stomping dirge that entirely transforms this truly astounding track.

The final side of ‘Live at Widney High December 26th, 1971’ is offered to a 23 minute medley of two pieces - "Little A's Chant" and "Flight 17" - penned by Herbert Baker, one of the Arkestra's young pianists who died in a car accident, roughly six months prior, at age 17. Beginning with balladic treatments by Linda Hill, fitting to the remembrance and loss of Baker that permeated the collective at that time, the group slowly picks up the pace, weaving swinging grooves imbued with the blues and elements of be-bop, before transitioning to hard-blown free jazz fire that defines the composition of "Flight 17”, before concluding where it began within the embrace of Hill’s sorrowful voice.

Unfolding as a remarkably emotive sonic journey into the realms of real-time creativity, ‘Live at Widney High December 26th, 1971’ stands far beyond expected achievements of the archival release. Rather than simply offering a bit more material by a beloved artist or a window into what it might have been like to be there ourselves, the album is a proof of the power of jazz as an art form and its singularity as a live music. As incredible as Horace Tapscott and the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra’s studio discography is, it’s hard to pinpoint a single album that achieves what this one does. It’s an absolute marvel, gifting a lifetime of joyous listening, revealing new depths with every return.