The Mike Westbrook Concert Band
Release Date: 25 May 2018
Label: Cadillac Records
Packaging Type: Digipak
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 5051078961828
Genres: Jazz Contemporary
Description
The Mike Westbrook Concert Band recorded at Ronnie Scott's Old Place 25 May 1968. Exactly 50 years on, a unique event featuring the music of the most exciting British jazz group of its time in full swing, released for the first time. Remembering John Jack, Mike Osborne, Harry Miller and Paul Rutherford.
"So many good things were contained within the Mike Westbrook Concert Band of 1968 that it's hard to know where to start. Its personnel included the components of a whole scene of young London-based jazz musicians, bursting with energy and the desire to express the sounds they were discovering collectively and as individuals...
Three months later, Release would be recorded by the producer Peter Eden for the Deram label, its episodes trimmed in order to fit the playing time of a 12-inch LP. In this version, with no time constraints and in front of a sympathetic and sometimes vocally appreciative audience, the musicians are allowed to stretch out in a majestic sprawl of relaxed creativity. So we have a chance to appreciate at greater length the frantic brilliance of George Khan's tenor and Bernie Livings's alto, Surman reaching a peak of youthful ebullience, the nerve-tingling dialogue between Dave Holdsworth's trumpet and Alan Jackson's drums, Harry Miller's unflagging support play, and the wonderful contrast of trombone approaches set up by Malcolm Griffith's proud roar and Rutherford's oblique nurdling. A special place is reserved for the immortal Mike Osborne, whose solo feature linking the standard "Lover Man" and the Westbrook original "For Ever and a Day" occupied four minutes of the studio recording but here is stretched to more than twice that length in a breathtakingly contoured passage of soul-piercing, heart-stopping, sweetly bruised beauty.
I wasn't lucky enough to be there that night to hear all this magic filling a Chinatown basement. Perhaps you weren't, either. But we are now." Richard Williams
Personnel: Dave Holdsworth (trumpet), Malcolm Griffiths, Paul Rutherford (trombone), Mike Osborne, Bernie Living, George Khan, John Surman (saxophone), Mike Westbrook (piano), Harry Miller (bass), Alan Jackson (drums)
Compositions & arrangements by Mike Westbrook, recorded by George Smith. Album produced by Mike Westbrook & Mike Gavin.
Tracklisting
Albert Nicholas
Mike Westbrook
The Crane River Jazz Band
Bobby Wellins Quartet
Evan Parker Quartet
Dudu Pukwana & Bob Stuckey
Mike Osborne Trio, Harry Miller & Tony Levin
Harry Beckett
Anthony Ferrara
Alex Norris
Makiko Hirabayashi
Steve Johns
Andrew Rathbun
Adam Fairhall & Johnny Hunter
Eivind Austad Trio
David Ferris Septet
