(You can also listen to a playlist of this chapter)

In the early 1960s, a number of jazz musicians were caught in between the decadence of bebop and hard bop and the boom of free jazz, but still managed to coin a style that was their own and that presaged future developments.

St Louis-born alto, tenor and soprano saxophonist Oliver Nelson moved to New York in 1958. He became famous mainly as an arranger, but was also a consistent hard-bop player: Takin' Care of Business (march 1960), for a quintet with vibraphone, organ, bass, drums, containing Trane Whistle; Afro-American Sketches (november 1961), a concept album for big band, dedicated to the history of black people in the USA (Emancipation Blues, Freedom Dance); and especially Blues and the Abstract Truth (february 1961), with his most famous songs (Stolen Moments, Teenie's Blues) and a stellar cast (Nelson on tenor and alto, Eric Dolphy doubling on alto and flute, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Bill Evans on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, Roy Haynes on drums).
Later Nelson preferred to compose for large ensemble: Sound Piece for Jazz Orchestra, off Sound Pieces (september 1966), Black Brown And Beautiful (october 1969), Berlin Dialogue For Orchestra (november 1970), containing two suites, Berlin Dialogue for Orchestra and Impressions of Berlin, and the 27-minute Swiss Suite, first recorded on Swiss Suite (june 1971). TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

Chicago-born pianist Andrew Hill extended hard bop way beyond its original foundations. Relocating to New York in 1962, Hill, formerly a student of classical composer Paul Hindemith, introduced a new degree of rhythmic and harmonic complexity on Black Fire (november 1963), with tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, bassist Richard Davis and drummer Roy Haynes unleashed in subdued, brainy compositions (often marked by Afro-Cuban accents) such as Land Of Nod, Pumpkin, Subterfuge and Black Fire. A similar rarefied quartet session, Smokestack (december 1963), failed to muster the cohesiveness of the debut, but Judgement (january 1964), a quartet session with vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, bassist Richard Davis and drummer Elvin Jones, successfully merged hard bop with modal jazz and free jazz in six austere performances (including Siete Ocho, Alfred, Yokada Yokada). Hill's research program peaked with the more lively excursions of Point of Departure (march 1964), accompanied by Eric Dolphy on saxophone, clarinets and flute, Joe Henderson on saxophones, Kenny Dorham on trumpet, Richard Davis on bass and Tony Williams on drums The three longest tracks, Refuge, Spectrum and especially New Monastery, were avantgarde within the tradition, an endless reinvention of hard bop, an art of multi-horn chromatic embellishment and elusive tonality. Yet another line-up (Sun Ra's tenor saxophonist John Gilmore, drummer Joe Chambers, Hutcherson, Davis) returned to Hill's more abstract aesthetic on Andrew (june 1964), another set of neurotic and ever-shifting pieces that often achieve intense pathos (The Griots and Le Serpent Qui Danse). The most daring of Hill's experiments was perhaps Compulsion (october 1965), that contained four lengthy pieces (Compulsion, Limbo, Legacy, Premonition ) for a septet including Gilmore, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard and three percussionists. This was as close to free jazz as Hill would ever get, as if the great hard-bopper had finally exhausted the possibilities of the genre. Alas, Hill's fortune was inversely proportional to his creativity. Dance With Death (october 1968), not released until 1980, contained several charming experiments (Partitions, Dance With Death, Love Nocturne) for trumpeter Charles Tolliver, saxophonist Joe Farrell, drummer Billy Higgins and bassist Victor Sproles, and Passing Ships (november 1969), rediscovered in 2001, was scored for jazz nonet and bordered on third-stream music (especially Noon Tide). Lift Every Voice (may 1969), for jazz quintet and operatic vocals, signaled that Hill was ready to try his hand at classical music, which he did by composing an opera, string quartets and orchestral works.
Hill returned to jazz with the piano-bass-drums trio of Invitation (october 1974), and the sax-piano-bass-drums quartet of Blue Black (february 1975) and especially of the 25-minute Divine Revelation, off Divine Revelation (july 1975). Hill also turned to solo piano music with the vignettes of Hommage (july 1975), the two side-long improvisations of From California With Love (october 1978), Bayside, off Faces of Hope (june 1980), and Verona Rag, off Verona Rag (july 1986). But he finally resumed his journey through chamber jazz with Eternal Spirit (january 1989), a quintet session with vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson and altoist Greg Osby, But Not Farewell (september 1990), for a quintet with trombonist Robin Eubanks and Osby, that includes the free solo-piano improvisation Gone, and especially Dusk (october 1999), for a sextet with trumpet and two saxophones, containing some of his most elegant experiments (Dusk, Sept, 15/8). TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

White Canadian-born pianist Paul Bley, who relocated in 1950 to New York to study at a prestigious school of music and was hired by Charlie Mingus in 1952, was honored, at the young age of 21, by Mingus on double-bass and Art Blakey on drums on his debut trio sessions, Introducing Paul Bley (november 1953), that already featured some of his inspired originals (Opus 1, Spontaneous Combustion) but was still under the influence of Lennie Tristano's bebop style.
Bley began to emancipate his performance from that cliche' on Solemn Meditation (august 1957), another quartet but with Dave Pike on vibraphone and Charlie Haden on double-bass (his recording debut). In 1957 Bley married composer Carla Borg, moved to Los Angeles and formed a quintet with Ornette Coleman (alto saxophone), Don Cherry (trumpet), Billy Higgins (drums) and Charlie Haden (double bass), documented on The Fabulous Paul Bley Quintet (october 1958), that straddled the line between bebop and free improvisation (a Coleman piece is titled Free). A trio with bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Pete LaRoca on Footloose (september 1963) evoked the contemporary experiments of Tristano and Bill Evans with a set of graceful vignettes (including Carla Bley's Floater and King Korn). Next came the quartet of Turning Point (march 1964), with Sun Ra's tenor saxophonist John Gilmore, double bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Paul Motian, that again flirted with free jazz but remained within the boundaries of cool jazz (notably in Paul Bley's Turns and Carla Bley's Ida Lupino and Syndrome). The influence of Ornette Coleman was more visible on Barrage (october 1964), entirely composed by Carla Bley (who also manipulated the tapes in studio to produce a thicker sound), for a quintet with Sun Ra's alto saxophonist Marshall Allen, trumpeter Dewey Johnson, bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Milford Graves. But the composer was to be credited more than the players with the success of Barrage and Ictus.
Paul Bley came into his own with a trio formed in 1965. Abandoning all previous influences, the ten short vignettes of Closer (december 1965), mostly composed by Carla Bley (but Annette Peacock debuted as a composer with Cartoon) and accompanied by Steve Swallow on bass and Barry Altschul on drums, were in the spirit of a romantic, lyrical chamber jazz, almost "ambient music" ante-litteram. Bley continued to record in the trio format (with drummer Barry Altschul and either Kent Carter or Mark Levinson on bass) for a while: Touching (november 1965), containing Carla Bley's Start and Peacock's Touching; Ramblin' (july 1966), containing Peacock's lengthy Albert's Love Theme and Touching; Blood (october 1966), which was mostly a Peacock album (notably Blood and Mr Joy); Virtuosi (june 1967), the most atmospheric and sophisticated of them all, with Gary Peacock on bass and containing even longer interpretations of two masterful Annette Peacock compositions, Butterflies (16 minutes) and Gary (17 minutes); Ballads (july 1967), maybe even too baroque in its delicate slow-motion mood sculpting vein (Peacock's 17-minute Ending and 12-minute So Hard It Hurts). In 1967 Paul Bley divorced Carla Bley and married another top-notch composer, Annette Peacock. The combination of Bley's smooth trio sound and Annette Peacock's elegant melodies coined a new genre, that would make the label ECM rich.
But Bley was ready to move on again. Annette Peacock became a key member of Bley's new ensemble, playing the most unusual of instruments, the synthesizer, next to Bley's electric piano. She was, in fact, one of the very first musicians to use a synthesizer (which was still a very complex machine) and probably the first one to take it on a tour. The Synthesizer Show, as their ensemble was called, recorded several pieces that eventually found their way to several milestone recordings: Revenge (november 1969), divided into a side played by the Bley-Peacock-Altschul trio (Mr Joy, Daddy's Boat, Dream) and a side played by Annette Peacock and her new ensemble (not featuring Bley) which marks the beginning of Peacock's solo career, and in which she also does her very first raps (Loss Of Consciousness, Nothing Ever Was Anyway, I'm The One); Improvisie (march 1971), with Paul Bley on synthesizer, Annette Peacock on vocals and piano, Han Bennink on percussion (which contains two lengthy improvisations, the 16-minute Improvisie and a 24-minute version of Touching); Dual Unity (march 1971), featuring Paul Bley on synthesizer and piano, Annette Peacock on piano and vocals, Han Bennink on drums and Mario Pavone on double bass (Richter Scale being the most representative and loudest of the four tracks, and the 17-minute MJ being the n-th version of Mr Joy); and the inferior The Paul Bley Synthesizer Show (march 1971), that does not feature Peacock anymore, but features an all-Peacock program.
But this "synthesizer show" had been mostly Annette Peacock's personal show. Bley returned to the "ambient" sound he had pioneered during the trio years with a solo piano album, Open To Love (september 1972), titled yet again after a Peacock composition (and one of her best). Most of the material was made of old Carla Bley and Annette Peacock compositions, but the delivery was now emphasizing the spatial ambience and the spiritual side of things.
After divorcing Peacock, Bley formed a new trio, Scorpio (november 1972), playing electric and electronic keyboards next to Altschul and British double-bassist Dave Holland, and converting to the jazz-rock style in vogue at the time, but in a rather shallow manner. Bley's erratic career flirted with free jazz on Quiet Song (november 1974), with guitarist Bill Connors and clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre, returned to the Scorpio sound on Pastorius Metheny Ditmas Bley (june 1974), that marked the recording debut of both guitarist Pat Metheny and bassist Jaco Pastorius, and occasionally revived his trio with Peacock and Altschul, for example on the live 33-minute Japan Suite (july 1976).
He seemed more interested in innovating in other formats, particularly the visual one: in 1974 he formed a company with video artist Carol Goss to produce videos in the same improvised manner as the music was produced by free-jazz musicians.
By far his most influential output was in the format of the impressionistic piano piece: Alone Again (august 1974), finally relying mostly on his own material, Axis (july 1977), containing his lengthy Axis, Tears (may 1983), Tango Palace (may 1983).
Continuing to pursue his vision of baroque chamber jazz music, Bley formed a quartet with Swallow, Altschul and guitarist John Scofield for Hot (march 1985), one with Motian, guitarist Bill Frisell and saxophonist John Surman for Fragments (january 1986) and The Paul Bley Quartet (november 1987), the latter containing his 20-minute Interplay, and yet another one with Surman, Gary Peacock and drummer Tony Oxley for In The Evenings Out There (september 1991), and even reformed the trio with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian for Not Two Not One (january 1998). But mostly he continued to explore the piano on intimate recordings such as: Blues For Red (may 1989), Changing Hands (february 1991), Synth Thesis (september 1993), accompanying himself at the synthesizer, Sweet Time (august 1993), Hands On (march 1993), Basics (july 2000), Nothing to Declare (may 2003), that (abandoning his favorite "fragment" format) indulged in four lengthy improvisations, etc.
Paul Bley updated the language of Bill Evans to a new generation, even before that generation was born. TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

Tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter had his breakthrough with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers (1959-64), for which he composed Chess Players (march 1960) and Lester Left Town (november 1959) on The Big Beat (1960), Children of the Night (august 1961) on Mosaic (1961), Reincarnation Blues (november 1961) on Buhaina's Delight (1962) This Is For Albert and Sweet 'N' Sour on Caravan (october 1962), One by One (june 1963), Ping-Pong (february 1961) and On the Ginza (june 1963) on Ugetsu (1963), Free For All (february 1964) on Free For All, Mr Jin (april 1964) on Indestructible. His tenor saxophone had a unique sound and his compositions had a unique atmosphere. Shorter's compositions for his own albums were, instead, rudimentary at best. Influenced by the hard bop played by Blakey, Shorter's first solo sessions, Blues A la Carte (november 1959), also known as Introducing, were recorded by a quintet with Lee Morgan on trumpet, Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums, while Second Genesis (october 1960) featured pianist Cedar Walton, bassist Bob Cranshaw and Blakey in person, and Wayning Moments (november 1961) a quintet with Freddie Hubbard on trumpet. He also worked for Freddie Hubbard (1962-63) and Lee Morgan (1964-67). He was hired by Miles Davis (1964-70) to work on Davis' new ideas, that eventually led to the invention of fusion jazz. Shorter was crucial for Davis' project. Not only did his saxophone sculpt much of the sound, but his compositions were among the most relevant of this phase of Davis' career: E.S.P. and Iris on E.S.P. (1965), Orbits, Footprints and Dolores on Miles Smiles (1966), Prince of Darkness, Masqualero and Limbo on Sorcerer (1967), Nefertiti and Fall on Nefertiti (1967), Paraphernalia on Miles in the Sky (1968), Sanctuary on Bitches Brew (1969), Great Expectations on Big Fun (1970). These compositions were so important, and so carefully crafted by the saxophonist, that Shorter may have been the real brain of much of Davis' music, Davis being merely the trumpet player. Shorter was a subtle and sophisticated composer who violated the rules of jazz music by indulging in ethereal melodies, slow tempos and sustained tones.
In parallel, Shorter's own albums coined an oneiric, pensive and personal sound that borrowed from John Coltrane (mainly), Art Blakey and Miles Davis while pointing towards the jazz-rock revolution. Lee Morgan on trumpet, McCoy Tyner on piano, Reggie Workman on bass and Elvin Jones on drums (Jones and Tyner being both members of the Coltrane quartet) helped him sculpt the lyrical, waltzing Night Dreamer, the romantic ballad Virgo, and the sophisticated harmonies of Black Nile and Armageddon on Night Dreamer (april 1964). The playing was more cohesive (especially in JuJu) and the compositions were more expressive (particularly Yes or No) on Juju (august 1964), recorded with the same rhythm section but without Morgan, but Shorter boldly abandoned the Coltrane paradigm on Speak No Evil (december 1964). Freddie Hubbard on horns, Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass and Jones on drums helped him find an unlikely balance of hard bop, modal jazz and free jazz while increasing the melodic intensity. The playing was not revolutionary at all, but Witch Hunt and Speak No Evil showed his compositional genius, and the album closing with two tender ballads, Infant Eyes (perhaps the most memorable of his career) and Wild Flower, that heralded a new era of emotions in jazz music.
The Soothsayer (march 1965) marked the return of Reggie Workman on bass, the replacement of Jones with Tony Williams on drums, and the addition of alto saxophonist James Spulding next to Hubbard and Shorter. Now that Jones was gone, Tyner became more than ever the anchor of Shorter's sound. The three horns and the piano offered the composer a chance to experiment more complex structures (The Soothsayer, Lost, The Big Push).
After the subdued Et Cetera (june 1965), released only in 1980 and also known as The Collector, a quartet session with Hancock, Chambers and bassist Cecil McBee that featured the eleven-minute Indian Song, Shorter added trombonist Grachan Moncur to the horn section of himself, Hubbard and Spaulding and to the rhythm section of Hancock, Carter and Chambers for The All Seeing Eye (october 1965). The lush instrumental textures obscured Shorter's melodic flair and brought out the most brooding and psychological elements of his music, especially in The All Seeing Eye, Genesis and Mephistopheles. This album, de facto, ended Shorter's long flirtation with Coltrane's music.
After that experimental tour de force, Shorters returned to a humbler format (a quartet with Hancock, Workman and Chambers) and a simpler form of music (Footprints, Adam's Apple, Chief Crazy Horse) for Adams' Apple (february 1966). The sextet of Schizophrenia (march 1967), featuring Spaulding, trombonist Curtis Fuller and the rhythm section of Hancock, Carter and Chambers, continued to plow the border between bop tradition and free-jazz avantgarde in pieces such as Tom Thumb. The sophistication of the arrangements was rapidly becoming the main raison d'etre of Shorters' music. All in all, his compositional skills were still better served in Davis' recordings than in Shorters' own recordings. He seemed to acknowledge that much by veering sharply towards Davis' fusion sound on Super Nova (august 1969), employing stars of the genre such as electric guitarists John McLaughlin and Sonny Sharrock, Chick Corea, bassist Miroslav Vitous, drummer Jack DeJohnette, etc. and setting new standards of call-and-response between solo and accompaniment in the rubato Capricorn. Moto Grosso Feio (april 1970), only released in 1974, added Dave Holland to McLaughlin, Vitous, Carter and Corea and at least tried to improve on the stereotype with the lengthy Moto Grosso Feio and Iska, but Odyssey of Iskra (august 1970), performed by an octet with vibraphone, guitar, two basses, three percussionists, proved that Shorter was after mere living-room entertainment.
In 1970 Shorter and Joe Zawinul left Davis to form Weather Report. Shorter still recorded an album of mediocre latin-jazz ballads, Native Dancer (september 1974), with Brazilian vocalist Milton Nascimento and percussionist Airto Moreira, and collaborated with singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell (1977-2002), but his creative energy was clearly reserved for the band.

Ohio-born blind saxophonist and flutist Roland Kirk, who moved to Chicago in 1960, debuted with Triple Threat (november 1956), a showcase for his virtuoso technique. He produced formerly unheard sounds by playing more than one instrument at once (a veritable one-man horn section), the instruments being modified saxophones. On stage he was the ultimate eccentric, but the gimmick was rapidly exhausted in the studio after a collaboration with saxophonist and trumpeter Ira Sullivan, Introducing Roland Kirk (june 1960), containing The Call, and a collaboration with organist Jack McDuff, Kirk's Work (july 1961), with Funk Underneath. Kirk focused on soul-influenced material that did not quite provide the ideal launching pad for his polyphonic saxophone technique. Kirk began expanding in earnest the technique of the flute, particularly by incorporating circular breathing, on I Talk With the Spirits (september 1964), containing his signature tune Serenade to a Cuckoo.
The volcanic Rip Rig & Panic (january 1965), backed by pianist Jaki Byard, bassist Richard Davis and drummer Elvin Jones, ran the gamut from traditional jazz to avantgarde music, with dramatic peaks in Rip Rig & Panic and in the cacophonous, psychedelic Slippery, Hippery, and Flippery. The groove era opened with Slightly Latin (november 1965), containing Ebrauqs, Now Please Don't You Cry Beautiful Edith (may 1967), with the chaotic ballad Now Please Don't You Cry Beautiful Edith, the intimate The Inflated Tear (november 1967), and Volunteered Slavery (july 1969).
However, Kirk's unorthodox art was best represented by the suites Expansions for big band and string section, off Left And Right (june 1968), and The Seeker for chamber ensemble, off Rahsaan Rahsaan (may 1970). He played (almost) all the instruments on the brief sketches of Natural Black Inventions - Root Strata (february 1971). The best display of his self-indulgent exhibitions was perhaps the live double-LP Bright Moments (june 1973), with lengthy versions of Pedal Up and Bright Moments.
The soul influence returned to dominate on Blacknuss (september 1971), with Blacknuss, and especially on the three-sided LP The Case of the 3 Sided Dream in Audio Color (may 1975), with Echoes of Primitive Ohio and Chili Dogs and Portrait of Those Beautiful Ladies. These albums were only marred by inferior material (frequently borrowed from the soul and pop repertory).
On the other hand, Kirk transcended all styles in his most gargantuan and improbable experiments, such as the eclectic and fiery Saxophone Concerto, off Prepare Thyself To Deal With A Miracle (january 1973), and the nine-minute Theme for the Eulipions on The Return of the 5000 Lb Man (1975). TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

Boston's pianist Jaki Byard, who moved to New York in 1959, was relatively old when he was finally recruited by Eric Dolphy for Outward Bound (april 1960), Here and There (april 1960) and Far Cry (1960), the latter containing Byard's eight-minute Mrs Parker of K.C., and by Charles Mingus for The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady (1963). The solo-piano album Blues For Smoke (december 1960) had already proven that Byard was rather unique in the way he mastered the whole spectrum of jazz piano, from stride to swing to bebop to free. The trio with bassist Ron Carter and drummer Roy Haynes of Here's Jaki (march 1961) allowed him even more flexibility The trio remained his favorite format, particularly for original compositions such as Here to Hear on Hi-Fly (january 1962) and the eleven-minute Freedom Together on Freedom Together (january 1966), on which he also played celeste, vibraphone, tenor sax and drums, peaking with Sunshine Of My Soul (october 1967), that featured Elvin Jones on drums, a set of longer pieces each of which sounds like the effortless imitation of a different style (Sunshine, Chandra, and especially the free-form Trendsition Zildjian). TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

Texas' pianist Cedar Walton who moved to New York in 1955 and played with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers (1961-64), was emblematic of the musicians of the 1960s who continued to express themselves in the hard-bop vernacular ignoring most of the innovations of free jazz and fusion jazz. Walton was capable of charming compositions and playing in an unassuming melodic style, as proven on his debut album, Cedar (july 1967). TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

White guitar virtuoso Joe Pass recorded his first album, Sound Of Synanon (july 1962), while he was living in a drug rehabilitation center, using an electric guitar designed for rockers. Influenced by both Charlie Christian and by Django Reinhardt, he proceeded to revisit the traditions of swing and bebop music, but attained true guitar nirvana with the electric guitar solos of Virtuoso (august 1973), although he wasted his immense talent in covers of other people's songs. Only Virtuoso 3 (june 1977) fully displayed his potential on a set of self-composed guitar studies. TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

The format of the piano-led trio experimented by Bill Evans was further explored by Chicago's white pianist Denny Zeitlin (who had relocated to San Francisco in 1964) on albums such as Cathexis (march 1964) for a trio, that set the theme for his research, Carnival (october 1964), for another trio (Charlie Haden on bass), Zeitgeist (march 1967), for the same trio, that included included the free-form Mirage. He was not afraid to tamper with dissonance and electronics, for example in the 14-minute El Fuego de las Montanas, off Expansion (1973), and in the four-movement suite Syzygy, off Syzygy (1977), and in the melodramatic film soundtrack Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). A psychiatrist by profession, Zeitlin was pioneering a fusion of jazz, rock, classical and electronic music. TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

Influenced by contemporary hard-bop and soul-jazz, but already sensitive to the appeal of Miles Davis' sound, the quartet formed by tenor saxophonist Charles Lloyd with pianist Keith Jarrett, bassist Cecil McBee and drummer Jack DeJohnette penned Dream Weaver (march 1966), that contained the suites Autumn Sequence and Dream Weaver, and Forest Flower (september 1966), that contained the suite Forest Flower, two albums that achieved crossover success, a premonition of the jazz-rock era. TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

Philadelphia's white guitarist Pat Martino began his career in an uneventful while impeccable hard-bop manner on El Hombre (may 1967) and Strings (october 1967), but the four-movement Indo-Islamic suite Baiyina (june 1968) already displayed a passion for exotic arrangements and fusion overtones. Desperado (march 1970) and subsequent albums added rock, funk and soul to the mixture. TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

Pittsburgh's blind white alto saxophonist Eric Kloss debuted as a leader at the age of 16 in an old-fashioned hard-bop vein. He began to composed his material on albums such as Sky Shadows (august 1968), featuring a quintet with guitarist Pat Martino, pianist Jaki Byard, bassist Bob Cranshaw and drummer Jack DeJohnette, and In the Land of the Giants (january 1969), replacing the guitar with a tenor saxophone, and he attained an original pop and funk fusion when he coopted Miles Davis' rhythm section of keyboardist Chick Corea, bassist Dave Holland, and DeJohnette for To Hear Is To See (july 1969). More adventurous music surfaced in the 18-minute suite One Two Free, off One Two Free (august 1972), for saxophone, guitar (Pat Martino), keyboardist, bass (Dave Holland) and drums, and in the lengthy jams of Essence (december 1974). TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

Japanese pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi came to prominence with the soulful bebop fantasias of The Toshiko Trio (1955), but, having relocated to New York, her talent as an arranger soon led her to form an orchestra, that debuted on Toshiko Mariano & Her Big Band (april 1965). That idea was perfected on the albums recorded by the orchestra she formed in Los Angeles with her husband, classically trained tenor saxophonist and flutist Lew Tabackin, and that mainly relied on her compositions, for example Kogun (april 1974) and Long Yellow Road (march 1975). Her artistic zenith was represented by the 23-minute Henpecked Old Man on Road Time (february 1976) and the 21-minute Minamata on Insights (june 1976). The bang continued to record alluring post-bop albums such as March of the Tadpoles (january 1977), Salted Ginko Nuts (november 1978), Sumi-E (february 1979). A new orchestra formed in New York premiered other ambitious Akiyoshi compositions such as: Blues Break on Ten Gallon Shuffle (may 1984), Liberty Suite on Wishing Peace (july 1986), Desert Lady on Desert Lady Fantasy (december 1993). TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

World-bop

Jewish bebop flutist Herbie "Mann" Solomon (1930) debuted with the 10" EP Plays (december 1954) in a straightforward bebop recordings, and became a prolific interpreter of the genre. But exotic themes popped up even on his earliest recordings, for example the lengthy Tel Aviv on Flute Souffle (march 1957) and the African Suite (1959). Eventually, Mann became one of the drivers of the Afro-Cuban wave via the live Flautista (june 1959), featuring vibraphone, bass and Latin percussion (marimba, bongos, congas), with the colorful The Amazon River and the catchy Cuban Potato Chip, via Flute, Brass, Vibes and Percussion (june 1960), featuring four trumpets, three percussionists and the eponymous jazz quartet, via The Common Ground (august 1960) for his Afro-Jazz Sextet and four trumpets (that mixed Middle-Eastern, African and Latin folk music with pop melody and bebop), and especially via Brazil Blues (1961) and Do The Bossanova (october 1962), recorded with Brazilian musicians. A serious attempt at blending Middle-Eastern and jazz music yielded Impressions of the Middle East (march 1966) and The Wailing Dervishes (september 1967).
Mann's ambitions extended to jazz-classical fusion: he composed a Concerto Grosso in D Blues (november 1968) for jazz quintet and symphony orchestra that was a parallel tribute to the histories of both genres, running the gamut from romantic music to dissonant music, and from dixieland to free jazz.
When the times changed, Mann easily transitioned to the funky sound of Memphis Underground (july 1969), featuring vibraphonist Roy Ayers, guitarists Larry Coryell and Sonny Sharrock and a soul rhythm section, to the atmospheric, strings-enhanced fusion of Stone Flutes (september 1969), with Miss Free Spirit, and to the lively funk and rock fusion of Push Push (july 1971).
His stylistic odyssey perhaps culminated with Reggae (december 1973), recorded with Jamaican musicians and containing the 19-minute romp My Girl. No other jazz musician had flirted so consistently with exotic music. TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

Latin themes had always been popular with jazz musicians. The precedents had been numerous and distinguished, beginning with Dizzy Gillespie's collaboration with Cuban conga player Chano Pozo (1947), Charlie Parker recorded Chico O'Farrel's 17-minute Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite (1950) with Machito's orchestra. George Shearing began his long series of Latin albums with Latin Satin (1953), featuring Latin musicians, vibraphonist Cal Tjader and harmonica player Toots Thielemans. Erroll Garner began his string of mambo albums with Mambo Mores Garner (1954). Jazz pianist Billy Taylor introduced Cuban conguero Candido Camero on With Candido (1954) and merged chamber jazz and Cuban music on Four Flutes (1959), scored for four flutes, piano, jazz rhythm section and Chino Pozo's congas. Kenny Burrell's Introducing Kenny Burrell (1956) featured a conga player. Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers recorded Cu-bop (may 1957), a Latin album featuring a congo player. Art Farmer recorded Chico O'Farrill's 16-minute Aztec Suite (1959). Stan Getz and Paul Winter turned bossanova into a national fad with, respectively, Jazz Samba (1962) and Jazz Meets Bossanova (1962). Cuban percussionist Ramon "Mongo" Santamaria became famous with Herbie Hancock's Watermelon Man (1963). But it was Herbie Mann who popularized Latin-jazz as more than just a novelty.

Los Angeles' vibraphonist Roy Ayers emerged from the hard-bop scene to adopt the eclectic and populist stance of his master Herbie Mann (1966-70). He had started out in the hard-bop dialect of the early 1960s on West Coast Vibes (july 1963), in a quintet with saxophone and piano, and Virgo Vibes (march 1967), featuring a stellar line-up with trumpeter Charles Tolliver, tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, bassist Reggie Workman and pianist Herbie Hancock. He switched to soul-funk-jazz fusion on the spiritual concept He's Coming (1971), featuring saxophonist Sonny Fortune, bassist John Williams, keyboardist Harry Whitaker and drummer Billy Cobham. Influenced by the electric jazz-funk sound of Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock, in 1970 Ayers formed his own group, Ubiquity, that proceeded to explore that cosmic/mystic kind of fusion on Ubiquity (1971), although his musical vision was better represented by the haunting movie soundtrack Coffy (april 1973). He was clearly transitioning towards slick disco and soul music, as proven by the production tour de force of Mystic Voyage (1975). Ayers electrified the vibraphone, complemented it with electric keyboards and employed a laid-back syncopated rhythm. Basically, Ayers predated acid-jazz by more than a decade with pieces such as Old One Two Move To Groove (1975), Everybody Loves the Sunshine (1976), Daylight (1977).

San Francisco-based white vibraphonist Cal Tjader, the former drummer in Dave Brubeck's trio (1949-51) and vibraphonist in George Shearing's quintet (1953-54), pioneered the mambo-jazz fusion on the 10" EP Lullaby of the Leaves (november 1951) in a trio featuring Vince Guaraldi on piano. His most original album, Latin Concert (september 1958), featured Willie Bobo on timbales and Mongo Santamaria on congas. A quartet led by Tjader (with trumpet and rhythm section) also performed Lalo Schifrin's Asian suite Several Shades of Jade (april 1963), one of exotica's most "ambient" results.

Detroit-raised flutist, oboe player and tenor saxophonist Bill "Yusef Lateef" Huddleston (1920), who had briefly played with Dizzy Gillespie (1949-50), converted to Islam in the 1950s (as was fashionable in those days) and moved to New York in 1959 to study flute. By then he had already become a sensation in Detroit in a sextet with trombonist Curtis Fuller (plus piano, bass, drums and percussion), and a pioneer of world-music thanks to his passion for Middle-Eastern and Indian music. Lateef played tenor, flute, argol (an India double reed wind instrument) and "scraper" on Stable Mates (april 1957), containing his ballad Ameena, and established himself as a sophisticated composer on the twin release Jazz Mood (april 1957), playing flute in the eight-minute introduction, Metaphor, and penning the extended blues meditations Yusef's Mood and Blues in Space as well as the ten-minute exotic-sounding Morning. Lateef's lyrical post-bop melodies were beginning to migrate into a dimension beyond jazz music.
He was less creative in the quintet with Wilbur Harden on flugelhorn and Hugh Lawson on piano that recorded Jazz and the Sounds of Nature (october 1957), containing the six-minute Seulb, and its twin release Prayer to the East (october 1957), containing the 13-minute Endura (but most pieces were either covers or Harden compositions), and then (one day later) The Sounds of Yusef (october 1957) and its twin release Other Sounds (october 1957), containing the nine-minute Minor Mood. The instrumentation included turkish finger cymbals, rabat/rebob (a one stringed Arabic violin) and Chinese gong.
An euphonium-piano quintet recorded The Dreamer (june 1959), with Moon Tree and Valse Bouk, and its twin album Fabric of Jazz (june 1959), with Arjuna, The Dreamer and Oboe Blues. Lateef also played the oboe with the trumpet-piano quintet of Cry Tender (october 1959). But he was distracted by several conventional hard-bop albums.
After he moved to New York, Lateef drifted away from hard-bop and refined an exotic and sometimes abstract blues music that was only his own. The ensemble music of The Centaur and the Phoenix (june 1961) for a nonet, such as Iqbal, led to Eastern Sounds (september 1961), on which Lateef played a variety of reed instruments backed by a traditional rhythm section of piano, bass and tabla-like percussion, with pieces such as Plum Blossom (for a Chinese clay flute), Snafu (for tenor sax), Blues For The Orient (for oboe).
If he never quite regained the compositional power of Jazz Mood, and frequently stumbled into the predictable jazz of releases such as Into Something (december 1961) and The Three Faces (january 1962), Lateef had found a new mission in the contemplative world-music of Jazz Round The World (december 1963), a parade of ten brief ethnic pieces. The milestones of this journey were Medula Sonata, off Psychicemotus (june 1964), an album that emphasized the sound of the bamboo flute, and 1984, off the piano-based quartet session 1984 (february 1965).

White clarinetist Tony "Scott" Sciacca was a late comer to the scene of bebop and cool jazz, playing on Sarah Vaughan in Hi-Fi (may 1950) with the gotha of bebop (trumpeter Miles Davis, trombonist Benny Green, guitarist Freddie Green), and forming a Septet that recorded Scott's Fling (january 1955) with trombonist Kai Winding and bassist Milt Hinton. He experimented with several formats that shunned the ruling styles. An Orchestra consisting of members of Count Basie's and Duke Ellington's orchestras plus a rhythm section with pianist Bill Evans, Hinton and Green, recorded The Touch (july 1956), containing Vanilla Frosting On A Beef Pie, and The Complete (february 1957), containing I'll Remember April. Three permutations of trumpeter Clark Terry, baritonist Sahib Shihab, trombonist Jimmy Knepper, pianist Bill Evans, bassist Henry Grimes, drummer Paul Motian recorded the twin albums My Kind of Jazz (november 1957), The Modern Art of Jazz (november 1957), containing Blues For 3 Horns, and Free Blown Jazz (november 1957), with Portrait Of Ravi. Scott played clarinet, sax, piano, mandolin on Sung Heroes (october 1959), also known as Dedications, whose pieces were dedicated to dead musicians, the recording that, de facto, marked the debut of the Bill Evans Trio with Paul Motian and Scott LaFaro.
In 1960 Scott left the USA and went to explore the Far East. The result was Music For Zen Meditation (february 1964), a collaboration with koto player Shinichi Yuize and shakuhachi flute player Hozan Yamamoto (notably the trio The Murmuring Sound of the Mountain Stream, the koto-clarinet duets After the Snow, the Fragrance, Prajna-Paramita-Hridaya Sutra and Sanzen), that predated both new-age music, world-music and ambient music. Having contributed to create the hare krishna zeitgeist of the hippy era, Scott followed that exploit with Homage to Lord Krishna (november 1967) and especially Music for Yoga Meditation and Other Joys (february 1968), a duet with sitar player Collin Walcott. Journeys to Africa yielded the solo percussion album Music for Voodoo Meditation (1971), on which Scott played only African percussions, and African Bird - Come Back Mother Africa, with the 16-minute African Bird Suite (february 1981) that married Charlie Parker and African percussion.

One of the founding fathers of world-music, Pennsylvania-born white alto-saxophonist Paul Winter formed his first sextet (alto sax, baritone saxophone, trumpet, piano, bass and drums) while he was studying in Chicago to play an aggressive (and self-penned) form of bebop, as documented on Paul Winter Sextet (december 1961). Instead, they were dispatched to Latin America and, when they returned, they helped popularize the Brazilian sound with Jazz Meets Bossanova (1962) and two albums recorded in Brazil with Brazilian musicians. That Winter's interest extended beyond Brazil was proven by Jazz Meets The Folk Song (december 1963), that integrated the spirit of folksinger Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie into the context of jazz. And that Winter's interest extended beyond popular music was proven by the Consort, the ensemble that he formed to play a hybrid of jazz, folk and classical music. The Winter Consort (1968) and Something In The Wind (1970) mixed chamber instruments such as the English horn and the cello with the saxophone's jazzy lead and African and/or Latin-American percussion, and the repertory included folk dances and classical pieces. Last but not least, the Consort adhered to the hippies' utopian mood. Road (june 1970) represented the Consort at its artistic peak: cellist David Darling, classical guitarist Ralph Towner, oboe and English horn player Paul McCandless, contrabassist Glen Moore and percussionist Collin Walcott (tablas, congas). The repertory included Towner's Icarus and Darling's Requiem. Towner was the main composer of Icarus (1971), although the longer piece was Winter's joyful anthem Whole Earth Chant. The instrumentation was expanded, with McCandless also on sarrusophone, Towner also on piano and organ, Walcott on sitar and all sorts of ethnic percussion. After Towner, McCandless, Moore and Walcott left to form Oregon, Winter convened a group of friends (including Darling, McCandless, drummer Steve Gadd, guitarist Oscar Castro-Neves) at a farm and recorded Common Ground (1978) amalgamating the voices of the animals with the jazz improvisation. The most influential experiment were Ocean Dream, featuring a humpback whale on lead vocals, three human vocalists and a Latin-jazz sextet, and Wolf Eyes for wolf, two human vocalists and neoclassical sextet. The mesmerizing sound pattern of whales had been popularized by Songs of the Humpback Whale (1970), produced by the zoologist Roger Payne, but Winter turned it into an instrument of a broader ensemble. The "new age" of the 1980s recognized Winter as its spokesman, and his fusion of jazz improvisation, chamber music, world-music and natural sounds as its manifesto. The ecological and spiritual spirit of Winter's program permeated Callings (september 1980), a jam session between sea mammals (recorded all over the world) and jazz musicians playing soprano saxophone (Winter), cello (Eugene Friesen), oboe and English horn (Nancy Rumbel), pipe organ and piano and harpsichord (Paul Halley), guitar (Jim Scott) and percussion (Ted Moore), including the ten-minute Blues Cathedral. Resonating with the new-age spirit of the era, Winter's albums led to the Missa Gaia (recorded between may 1981 and march 1982), the first ever mass to feature a wolf and a whale in the choir, a work drenched in hippy, pan-ethnic and gospel spirituality (the eleven-minute Return To Gaia), and to the Concert For The Earth (june 1984).
In the meantime, the impressionist in Winter surfaced on Sunsinger (1983), a trio with Halley and percussionist Glen Velez, and on Canyon (1985), recorded in the Grand Canyon and in a cathedral. Their delicate, evanescent vignettes blended folk melody, neoclassical composure and Eastern meditation.
Whales Alive (january 1987) used the droning melodies of whales to score the chamber music for Winter and Halley. Prayer For The Wild Things (1994), scored for 27 animal voices, seven instruments evoking animal voices, soprano saxophone, Native American choir and three percussionists, was his most ambitious collage ever.

White reed player Paul Horn, who cut his teeth with Chico Hamilton Quintet (1956-58) in Los Angeles, went through three stages of development. At first, on House of Horn (september 1957), he was a sophisticated improviser alternating on flute, clarinet and alto saxophone in different configurations of chamber jazz. Later he formed a quintet with vibraphone and piano that mimicked Miles Davis' quintet, playing an original hybrid of cool jazz, hard bop and third stream on Something Blue (march 1960). His quintet recorded one of the first jazz masses, Jazz Suite on the Mass Texts (november 1964) composed by Lalo Schifrin in eight movements for orchestra, choir and jazz quintet. After accompanying Ravi Shankar (1965) and after a sojourn in India (1966), Horn changed personality and style. Instead of the cool-jazz altoist, In India (may 1967), a set of classical ragas performed with students of Shankar on vina, sitar, tabla and tambura, and In Kashmir (1967), another collaboration with Indian musicians, revealed a flute mannerist imbued with Eastern spirituality and bent on replicating Indian drones. That mood peaked with his most influential invention, the solo improvisations/meditations "inside" spectacular buildings, in which the acoustics of the place becomes part of the music. The first one was Inside The Taj Mahal (april 1968), and the best one was probably Inside The Great Pyramid (may 1977). His vocabulary of fragile mummy-like whispers that exuded millenary silence and zen ecstasy was instrumental in creating the ultimate new-age ambience. Horn also delved into the tribal, shamanic, oneiric music of Nexus (1975) with the Nexus percussion ensemble, collaborated with a Chinese multi-instrumentalist for China (1982), returned to the solo flute concept for Inside The Cathedral (1983), and explored both the chamber and the electronic realms on Traveler (1987).

After cutting the first jazz record of the African continent, Verse I (september 1959), with Hugh Masekela's sextet, the Jazz Epistles, in 1962 Southafrican pianist Adolph "Dollar" Brand relocated to Europe and then to New York. He debuted in the vein of Thelonious Monk, who was hardly avantgarde at that point, with Duke Ellington Presents the Dollar Band Trio (february 1963), containing Ubu Suku and The Stride, followed by Round Midnight At The Montmartre (june 1965), also in a trio, that contained The Dream (both also contained Monk covers). Brand's musical ambitions were better represented by the five-part orchestral suite Anatomy of a South African Village (first recorded for trio in january 1965), the manifesto of his fusion of African rhythms, bebop piano and European classical music, and by collections of solo piano vignettes, permeated with a solemn and spiritual sense of nostalgia and often marked by disorienting dissonance: not so much the mediocre Reflections (march 1965), aka This Is Dollar Brand, as the brilliant African Piano (october 1969), that still contained extended pieces such as Bra Joe from Kilimanjaro and The Moon, and African Sketchbook (may 1969), a sequence of brief pieces (mostly under two minutes), the longest being African Sun and Tokai. These impressionistic miniatures, organized in a stream of consciousness, struck a balance between post-bop techniques, romantic melody and Islamic ecstasy. Despite coming from a different continent, a different race and a different musical genre, Brand's piano music was not too dissimilar from Oliver Messaien's. In 1968 Brand had converted to Islam and changed name (as was fashionable at the time) to Abdullah Ibrahim.
The early 1970s were the age of Brand's majestic solo albums. Ancient Africa (june 1972), one long live medley of Brand compositions, was only the appetizer. One session produced material for two albums: African Portraits (february 1973) and Sangoma (february 1973). The latter, his masterpiece, contained the three-part suite The Alone And The Wild Rose, the six-part suite Fats Duke And the Monk and the side-long three-part suite Ancient Africa. Besides the much inferior Memories (december 1973) and Ode To Duke Ellington (december 1973), the other notably solo album of the era was African Breeze (february 1974).
That magic season was sealed by Brand's masterpiece for large ensemble, African Space Program (november 1973), that contained two suites, the 19-minute Tintiyana and the 23-minute Jabulani, for a twelve-piece unit (piano, three trumpeters, four saxophonists including Hamiet Bluiett, flutist Sonny Fortune, trombone, bass and drums) in the vein of Charles Mingus. Also notable were the Southafrican quintet session with alto saxophonist Robbie Jansen and legendary tenor Basil Coetzee, Mannenberg It's Where It's Happening (june 1974), aka Capetown Fringe, that included his Cape Town Fringe and The Pilgrim: Underground in Africa (march 1974), with three wild horns undermining Brand's bluesy piano during the 23-minute Kalahari; Soweto (june 1975), aka Africa Herbs, that included Soweto Is Where It's At, African Herbs and Sathima, three extended compositions for larger combos; Blues For A Hip King (november 1975), for a septet of piano, two saxophones, trumpet, trombone, bass and drums; The Children Of Africa (january 1976), with Cecil McBee on bass and Roy Brooks on drums, that contained Ishmael and Yukio-Khalifa; the saxophone quartet Black Lightning (august 1976), with the side-long Black Lightning; and The Journey (september 1977), for a nonet featuring Bluiett, Dyani and Don Cherry. There was little in these romantic fantasies that could be called "avantgarde".
Each subsequent solo piano album was a tender tribute to his homeland: Anthem For The New Nations (june 1978), Autobiography (june 1978), Matsidiso (december 1980), South Africa Sunshine (december 1980), and especially African Dawn (june 1982).
A saxophone quartet penned the more pensive meditations of Africa - Tears And Laughter (march 1979), such as Ishmael and Did You Hear That Sound. Another simple but effective musical statement came with the eight vignettes of African Marketplace (december 1979) for a twelve- piece unit, and this time the nostalgic reminiscence of South Africa was almost folk music.
Opting for the septet, Brand formed Ekaya (in New York) with flutist Carlos Ward, tenor saxophonist Ricky Ford, baritone saxophonist Charles Davis, trombonist Dick Griffin, bassist David Williams and drummer Ben Riley. This line-up recorded some of the best albums of his later phase: Ekaya (november 1983), aka The Mountain, Water From An Ancient Well (october 1985), without Griffin, highlighted by the 12-minute Water From An Ancient Well, and African River (june 1989). A Southafrican septet (with two saxes, trumpet and guitar) recorded Mantra Mode (january 1991), with the nine-minute Mantra Mode. Solo albums of the last decades included Desert Flowers (december 1991) and Knysna Blue (october 1993), with the 16-minute Knysna Blue.
After the septet, Brand's favorite format was the trio: Yarona (january 1995), reinterpreting his classics for the 1000th time, Cape Town Flowers (august 1996), with the nine-minute Joan Cape Town Flower, Cape Town Revisited (december 1997), with the suite Cape Town to Congo Square, and African Magic (july 2001).
His neoclassical Ellington-ian ambitions yielded African Suite (november 1997) for string orchestra and piano trio, African Symphony (january 1998) for an 80-piece symphony orchestra (both devoted to re-arrangements of old Brand compositions), and Ekapa Lodumo (june 2000) for jazz big band (mostly taken up by Black And Brown Cherries and African Market). TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

Another musician who explored the link between the jazz music of the USA and its ancestral black home of Africa was New York's pianist Randy Weston, who was influenced by both the swing melodies of Duke Ellington and Nat King Cole and by the challenging harmonies of bop pianists such as Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell. Weston was capable of simple but effective compositions: the nine-minute Chessman's Delight on Jazz A la Bohemia (october 1956), Saucer Eyes on Piano A La Mode (june 1957), Little Niles, Pam's Waltz, Hi-Fly on Little Niles (october 1958), a set of originals that inaugurated his collaboration with arranger Melba Liston. However, he found his mission in life with the four-movement suite Uhuru Africa (november 1960), particularly the three longer ones (African Lady, Kucheza Blues, Bantu), that were performed by an eccentric ensemble featuring jazz musicians such as tenorist Yusef Lateef, trumpeters Clark Terry and Freddie Hubbard, guitarist Kenny Burrell, bassist Ron Carter, drummer Max Roach, as well as African percussionist Babatunde Olatunji and two conga players. Weston's compositions began to reflect his experience in Africa. African Cookbook (october 1964), arranged by trumpeter Ray Copeland, contained the 12-minute African Cookbook, besides the catchy Willie's Tune and Berkshire Blues. Weston actually lived in Morocco from 1968 to 1973, when he penned the twelve-minute Ganawa Blue Moses and the twelve-minute Marrakesh Blues for Tanjah Blue Moses (april 1972), an album arranged by Don Sebesky and featuring trumpeter Freddie Hubbard and tenor-saxophonist Grover Washington, the eight-minute Tanjah for a big band on Tanjah (may 1973) and Tangier Bay on the solo-piano Blues To Africa (august 1974).
As his original vision was being embraced by more and more musicians of the younger generation, Weston got motivated to further expand it. The double-CD Spirits Of Our Ancestors (may 1991) was a satori of the Weston-Liston collaboration, notably the 16-minute The Seventh Queen and the 20-minute African Sunrise. He recorded with The Splendid Master Gnawa Musicians of Morocco (september 1992). And Khepera (february 1998) was a collaboration between his quintet (Talib Kibwe on alto sax and flute, trombone, bass, percussion) and percussionist Chief Bey, saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and pipa player Min Xiao Fen. It was one of Weston's most inspired fusions, particularly in the twelve-minute The Shrine and the ten-minute Mystery Of Love. TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

French-Algerian pianist Errol Parker, born Raph Schecroun, settled in New York in 1968 and turned to the drums, introducing percussive and rhythmic styles borrowed from world-music, particularly from Algerian hand drumming. The lengthy jams of Doodles (september 1979) and Graffiti (may 1980) displayed his innovative vision (polytonality, polyrhythms, overdubbing) at both the piano and the drums. After inaugurating his large horns-dominate group with Tentet (april 1982), Parker focused more and more on African drumming. TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.