Uno dei capolavori chiave di Ellis , va ascoltato e riascoltato , un disco bellissimo , complesso ed in parte autocelebrativo del grande Maestro , che in molti aspetti , quali l'inventiva , la forza espressiva , il coraggio di osare , si dovrebbe considerare uno dei più grandi musicisti della storia .
This album and Live at Montreux are my two favorite Don Ellis albums, and two of my favorite big band albums. Actually, I guess they're two of my favorite albums, period. The band is terrific, the charts are great, the recording is great.
When I first heard this album, I was floored by the band's ability to play in odd meters, and yet still swing hard. I also loved how the band expanded the styles and sounds of a big band. Don integrates rock, funk, and electronic sounds seamlessly into the traditional big band setup.
Favorite tunes include Final Analysis, Extreme Divide (nothin' like swingin' in 13/4!), and Pussy Wiggle Stomp (swing in 7/4, and it really does swing!).
The soloists are all tremendous; the rhythm section swings and cooks furiously; the horns blow full (kudos to lead trumpet Glenn Stuart, who sounds terrific on all of Ellis' albums).
If you want to hear a big band on the cutting edge of big band music (an edge which no one else has yet approached), then get this album, and get Don Ellis Live at Montreux. Two landmark recordings.
I was in the audience the night this album was recorded at the Fillmore in San Francisco. I was 19 years old and a rock and roller to the bone. Then this anmazing group of people took the stage and even had some members walk through the crowd while playing and then played from the rear of the hall back at the rest of the orchestra on stage. It was a very energetic night and the night an appreciation for jazz was instilled in me. Thank you Mr. Ellis for a wonderful evening and for this very fun album!
5つ星のうち4.0"It's Jazz,Jim - but not as we know it"!!
2012年3月29日に英国でレビュー済み
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This double CD gives the listener a real taste of what a Don Ellis Orchestra live gig was all about - a mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous! The sublime moments (and there are many of them on these discs)are when the Band is in full flow and the amazingly talented soloists come soaring out of the ensemble - and, as ever with Ellis Band combinations, there are many very gifted soloists to enjoy. The numbers are often taken at a ferocious pace which never seems to faze anyone in the Band. However, there is a feeling that, because it is the Fillmore ,something "extra" has to be strived for and some of these efforts, to my ears, seem strained and unusually discordant - they were trying just a little bit too hard to be hip and "with it" for the benefit, no doubt , of the very "hip" and "with it" young Fillmore audience. There are a couple of tracks which have (what I have no doubt at the time) were very trendy sound effects (using all kinds of wierd and wonderful electronic gadgetry) but I for one do not think the "burps" and "pops" add anything at all to what later takes off as straight ahead flat-out big band swing. It might have been quite different for those lucky enough to be in the audience, but it is lost on me as a CD listener! However, there are only a couple of these electronic interludes and they certainly do not detract from the overall excellence of the Band's performance. There are so few Elllis Band offerings - this is certainly well worth acquiring
Miles Davis may have been morphing into The World's Oldest Teenager, while Don Ellis was proving to be The Field Marshall of Big Band Jazz' s invasion of the Future. Ellis' visions for music and the jazz big bands probably will never return.This is mostly due to Don's passing and the economics of the music industry, not so much due to the dearth of taste and tolerance. Herein, find two CDs worth of jazz exploration in the defunct Fillmore of the mind.