Don Cherry - 1970 - Live in Ankara

Don Cherry 

1970

Live in Ankara

01. Gandalf's Travels 5:10

02. Ornette's Concept 2:20

03. Ornette's Tune 2:35

04. St. John & The Dragon 2:02

06. Efeler 2:31

07. Anadolu Havasi 3:02

08. The Discovery Of Bhupala 3:25

09. Water Boy 1:32

10. Yaz Geldi 3:00

11. Tamzara 1:03

12. Kara Deniz 1:12

13. Köcekce 1:11

14. Man On The Moon 2:56

15. The Creator Has A Masterplan 5:13

16. Two Flutes 2:50

Arranged By, Collected By – Maffy Falay (tracks: A5, A6, B2 to B5)

Bass – Selçuk Sun

Drums, Percussion – Okay Temiz

Percussion, Tenor Saxophone – Irfan Sümer

Trumpet, Zurna [Trumpet-zürna], Piano, Vocals, Flute – Don Cherry

Excellent stuff – and one of Don Cherry's first global jazz experiments on record! The set is a super-hip concert performance recorded at the US Embassy in Turkey, featuring a band of eastern-flavored players that includes Okay Temiz on percussion, Selcuk Sun on bass, and Irfan Sumer on tenor. Tracks are shorter and a bit tighter than some of Cherry's other work from the early 70s – but they also have a strong amount of world influences, and the record is perhaps one of his greatest achievements at cross-breeding musical cultures.

Recorded in November 1969 at the US Embassy, Live In Ankara saw the adventurous jazz trumpeter Don Cherry performing with saxophonist Irfan Sümer, bassist Selçuk Sun, and drummer Okay Temiz, with arrangements by trumpeter Maffy Falay, who had introduced Cherry to Temiz in Stockholm. Mostly comprised of Cherry originals and adaptations of Turkish folk songs, there are one-off takes of compositions by Ornette Coleman and Pharoah Sanders as well, the sparse musical ensemble giving Cherry ample room for soloing as they drift between the sounds of tradition and experimentation. A must for all Don Cherry fans.

Don Cherry - 1973 - Organic Music Society

Don Cherry

1973

Organic Music Society

01. North Brazilian Ceremonial Hymn 12:25
02. Elixir 6:08
03. Manusha Raga Kamboji 2:19
04. Relativity Suite Part1 6:52
05. Relativity Suite Part2 11:59
06. Terry's Tune 1:56
07. Hope 10:08
08. The Creator Has A Master Plan 6:28
09. Sidhartha 1:59
10. Utopia & Visions 6:33
11. Bra Joe From Kilimanjaro 2:33
12. Terry's Tune 5:10
13. Resa 5:41

Documentary recordings made 1971-1972
Only the recordings from August 14th, 1972 (Elixir-Relativity Suite) were made in a recording studio. The rest of the material consists of documentation recordings made on portable machines, some of them carried out under awkward acoustic conditions.

Track 1 recorded in Copenhagen July 28th, 1972 at 6 a.m.
Tracks 2-5 recorded at studio Decibel, Stockholm August 14th, 1972.
Tracks 6-10 recorded at Moderna Museet, Stockholm July 4th, 1971.
Tracks 11-12 recorded in Bollnäs June 23rd, 1971. These tracks feature a local youth orchestra.
Track 13 recorded in Oskarshamn August 3rd, 1972. Featured are the voices of the teachers at the summer course in Oskarshamn.

Tracks 1, 11, 12 and 13 are mono, the rest in stereo.
Comes with 2-sided 12" sized info-sheet.

Don Cherry, vocal, percussion, harmonium, flute, trumpet, piano

Naná Vasconcelos, vocals, berimbau
Noki, vocals, tambura
Helen Eggert, vocals, tambura
Steen Claesson, vocals
Roger Burk, vocals
Christer Bothén, guitar, piano
Bengt Berger, drums tablas
Maffy Falay, trumpet
Tommy Goldman, flute
Tommy Koverhult, flute
Tage Sivén, bass
Okay Temiz, drums

This is not a jazz album. This is the music of ritual. Any resemblance it has to jazz is purely coincidental and passing. This is the sound of utopia, of equality, of the universal egalitarian dream, of the earth, the water, and the life force in all its various guises. Many jazz heads from the late 1960s and early ’70s tried to commune with this earth spirit — Sun Ra, Pharaoh Sanders, Alice Coltrane, Phil Cohran, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago come immediately to mind — but none of them ever fully escaped the aerial plane. Sun Ra was more concerned with space; Pharaoh Sanders and Alice Coltrane worked in the realm of the eternal soul; Cohran and the Art Ensemble directly transmogrified the African diaspora. On this album, however, Don Cherry wants to create a sound untethered to trivialities like place, nation or time. It is the sound of breath, community, sociality, and, most fundamentally, of people. There is little concern for audio fidelity or virtuosity. All that matters is the moment of expression, the moment of creation, and the communal space the music reveals.

This is an album full of people. There is no set “band” to speak of. Musicians appear and disappear seemingly at will, by happenstance, depending on where Cherry happened to be playing and recording on that particular day. The only constant is Cherry and his mystical vision. And this Don Cherry, living in Sweden in ’71 and ’72, is very different from the Don Cherry of the 1960s. He only occasionally pulls out his trumpet, spending most of the album singing, chanting, exhorting his fellow travelers, and playing a variety of instruments from around the world. His manifesto is the two-part “Relativity Suite,” in which he improvises a pan-religious chant over an irresistible bass line on the doson n’goni with occasional interjections from other instruments. His tale wanders between gods (Jesus, Buddha, and Krishna, principally), creeds, and languages as simple means toward a larger end, an “organic music society.” The bass line becomes a mantra, the tuned log drum and bells are moments of revelation, and Cherry’s voice is the guide. It reminds me, obliquely, of the obsessive universalism of Stockhausen’s “Stimmung.” And when Cherry sends the bass line away with a whistle call, I can’t help but feel a little empty and disappointed. A similar feeling occurs at the end of “North Brazilian Ceremonial Hymn,” the extended prayer that opens the record, propelled forward by Nana Vasconcelos’ incredible, inventive berimbau playing. When his trumpet does appear, it’s in striking contrast to the album’s otherwise tantric feel; its slashing lines come from a different world, a different way of existing.

This is an album of education in practice. Cherry spent the summer of 1971 teaching at a youth music camp normally devoted to the study of classical music. Somewhere along the line, he brought a tape recorder along and recorded a swinging version of Dollar Brand’s “Bra Joe from Kilimanjaro” and a Terry Riley song titled, simply, “Terry’s Tune.” The fifty-odd piece band lays down Brand’s swinging bass line and Riley’s melancholy melody while Cherry (on trumpet and piano) and drummer Okay Temiz unleash some serious free jazz squalls. And the album closes with a group of elementary school teachers singing an Indian-inflected tune complete with tabla, tambura and harmonium. The informality of these recordings is the goal. The professional musicians merely provide a musical frame for the amateurs, with the critical moment coming when the amateurs break free of their own personal frames and join together for a joyous, communal utterance.

This is an album of specific places. The liner notes take pains to point out that “North Brazilian Ceremonial Hymn” was recorded at 6 a.m. in Copenhagen, and that most of side three was recorded in a geodesic dome outside the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm. While these aren’t field recordings by any stretch, they are imbued with the character of their locations, be it the sleepy spirituality of “North Brazilian Ceremonial Hymn,” the looping pan-tonal feel of the “domesessions,” or the spontaneity of the educational recordings. Only a fraction of the album was actually recorded in the studio, and the higher fidelity of those recordings feels almost like a betrayal.

This is an album of hippie-dippie spirituality. However, it is simultaneously more earnest and more sincere than most hippie excesses of the period. Perhaps this is because Cherry’s vision never feels fully naïve, regardless of his quasi-mystical incantations. Cherry’s gutsiness also goes a long way; it takes serious brass to release an album that spends so much time on such minuscule material. None of the songs I’ve singled out so far have grand musical visions. Their existence as music is almost completely incidental and arbitrary. They are, fundamentally, ritual and ritualized sociality. I will admit to not always being convinced by it, but I do get completely and wonderfully lost in so much of this record. This is, somehow or other, the real thing.

This music is what we can properly call “world music”: unbounded, melting world-wide elements and played by world-wide musicians using world-wide instruments. African pace, South American ceremonial hymns and Asian religiousness spirituality merge in an unique and peaceful feeling.

As the title announces, the music is totally organic, coming out from the earth guts.

Cherry’s trumpet appears sporadically; the music is mainly supported by vocalizations, percussions, flutes, piano, harmonium, tambura and exotic instruments. We can hardly call this jazz music. Even the recording process is amateurish: only four tracks were recorded in a studio; all the others were registered by portable equipment.

 

As Cherry says, here “we flow with the time”. Brilliant!

Bernt Rosengren - 1974 - Notes From Underground

Bernt Rosengren

1974

Notes From Underground

101. Theme from piano concerto no.2 in c-minor, op.18 [07:04]

102. In The Ocean [03:16]

103. Meyhane [03:13]

104. Gerda [07:27]

105. Fly Me To The Sun [05:14]

106. Gluck [06:16]

107. Some Changes I [08:59]

201. Some Changes II [09:22]

202. Iana Has Been Suprised In The Night [03:17]

203. Hakim Hanim [03:06]

204. Some Changes V [05:49]

205. Markitta Blues [03:44]

206. Splash [08:14]

207. Psalm [02:49]

208. Markitta Blues [00:55]

209. Some Changes VI [05:11]

Recorded 17-18 and 24-25 September, 1973, at EMI Studios, Stockholm, Sweden.

Track A1 from the original album has been deleted from the cd release for copyright reasons.

Maffy Falay,tp,darbuka(1/3)

Bernt Rosengren,ts,p(1/2 + 2/8),fl(2/2),taragot(2/3)

Tommy Koverhult,ts,fl(1/2),ss(1/4)

Bobo Stenson,p (1/1,4,5,7 + 2/1,4,5,7,9)

Torbjörn Hultcrantz,b,perc(2/2)

Leif Wennerström,dr,perc(2/2)

Okay Temiz,perc (1/1,2,4,5 + 2/1,3,4,5,7,9)

Bengt Berger,mridagam(1/1),tabla(1/4,5,7 + 2/1,4)

Salih Baysal,voc,v (1/3 + 2/3)

Bertil Strandberg,tb (1/4,5,7 + 2/1,4,5,7,9)

Gunnar Bergsten,bs (1/4,5,7 + 2/1,4,5,7,9)

Björn Alke,b (1/4,7 + 2/1,4,5,7,9)

Great LP that lives up to the hype. A spiritually charged session with all the players at the top of their game. Bobo Stenson and Okay Temiz really amaze me.

Lars Gullin - 1974 - Bluesport

Lars Gullin

1974 

Bluesport

01. Pontus 6:11

02. Mazurka 7:42

03. Bluesport 6:57

04. Omericano 11:36

05. Holy Grail 4:23

06. Motorcykeln 5:24

Alto Saxophone – Lennart Jansson

Baritone Saxophone, Piano – Lars Gullin

Bass – Björn Alke

Congas – Ahmadu Jarr

Drums – Fredrik Norén, Rune Carlsson

Electric Bass – Jan Bergman

Electric Guitar – Amedeo Nicoletti

Flugelhorn, Trumpet – Maffy Falay

Flute – Gunnar Lindqvist

Percussion – Okay Temiz

Piano – Lars Sjösten

Producer – Gunnar Lindqvist

Sopranino Saxophone – Lennart Åberg

Tenor Saxophone – Bernt Rosengren

Trombone – Bertil Strandberg

Recorded at EMI Studios, Stockholm, Sweden, September 8 (A1, A3) and 9 , 1974.

One of the top baritone saxophonists of all time and a giant of European jazz, Lars Gullin would be better known today if he had visited the U.S. often and if excessive drug use had not cut short his career. Early on he learned to play bugle, clarinet, and piano, and was actually a professional altoist until switching to baritone when he was 21. Sounding somewhere between Gerry Mulligan and Serge Chaloff, Gullin played in local big bands in the late '40s and was in Arne Domnerus' sextet (1951-1953), but is best known for his own small-group recordings. He played with such touring Americans as Lee Konitz (a major influence), James Moody, Clifford Brown, Zoot Sims, and Chet Baker, and recorded frequently during 1951-1960, with "Danny's Dream" being his most famous composition. Gullin also recorded a bit during 1964-1965, but made only one later session (1973). Despite a lot of accomplishments in the 1950s, he did not live up to his enormous potential. Gullin can be heard at his best on five Dragon CDs released as The Great Lars Gullin, Vols. 1-5.

Bernt Rosengren Big Band - 1977 - First Moves

Bernt Rosengren Big Band

1977

First Moves

01. Manhattan Reflections

02. You've Changed

03. My Song Is Blue

04. Felicidade

05. First Moves

06. Det Finns (So Many Things)

07. Beat Me Again

08. Meaning Of The Blues

09. Give Me Peace

Gunnar Bergsten, baritone saxophone

Torbjörn Hultcrantz, bass

Lars Bagge, bassoon, horn

Lennart Jansson, clarinet, bass clarinet, soprano, alto and baritone saxophone

Johnny Martinez, congas

René Martinez, congas

Sabu Martinez, congas

Lars Färnlöf, cornet, flugelhorn

Leif Wennerström, drums

Bernt Rosengren, flute, alto and tenor saxophone

Tommy Koverhult, English horn, soprano and tenor saxophone

Okay Temiz, percussion

Claes-Göran Fagerstedt, piano

Bobo Stenson, piano, electric piano

Anders Lindskog, tenor saxophone

Jan Jansson, trombone

Janus Miezek, trombone

Lars Olofsson, trombone

Lennart Löfgren, trombone

Sven Larsson, bass trombone

Björn Borg, trumpet

Bertil Lövgren, trumpet, flugelhorn

Maffy Falay, trumpet, flugelhorn

Nannie Porres, vocals

Bennie Svensson, vocals

Recorded April 12-15, 1977, at EMI Studios, Stockholm, Sweden.

Rosengren first played professionally at age 19, as a member of the Jazz Club 57, and two years later in 1959, he played in the Newport Jazz Band. Roman Polanski's film score composer Krzysztof Komeda used Rosengren in the performance of his jazz score for Polanski's film Knife in the Water (1962). Rosengren recorded a string of highly regarded albums in the 1960s and 1970s, including Stockholm Dues (1965), Improvisations (1969), and Notes from Underground (1974).

Rosengren played in a sextet led by George Russell in the 1960s in Europe. Later in the decade, he moved from hard bop into post-bop experimentation, playing with Don Cherry; in the 1970s, as a member of Sevda led by trumpeter Muvaffak "Maffy" Falay, he began working with elements of Turkish and Middle Eastern music. He also formed his own big band in the 1970s.

In the 1980s, Rosengren worked frequently with American jazz musicians such as Doug Raney, George Russell, Don Cherry and Horace Parlan. He recorded an album of songs from Porgy & Bess in 1996.

Chris Mosey, a jazz critic from All About Jazz, said in his review of Rosengren's album I'm Flying (2009): "All in all, I'm Flying is a worthy Golden Record." Jack Bowers, also writing for All About Jazz, wrote in his review of the same album: "Rosengren, for his part, is a model of elegance and consistency, inspiring his companions without stealing their thunder. Together they comprise a tight-knit and consistently engaging foursome. Besides blowing superbly, Rosengren wrote seven of the album's twelve selections. – Rosengren rides their talents like an Indy car driver, and the result is an exemplary team effort that is as stylish as it is rewarding

Sevda - 1972 - Live at Jazzhus Montmartre featuring Salih Baysal

Sevda 

1972

Live at Jazzhus Montmartre featuring Salih Baysal

01. Taksim 9:45

02. Misket 6:40

03. Ya Mustafa 4:55

04. Çifte Telli 3:15

05. Köçekce 4:15

06. Oyun Havasi 1:40

07. Çadirimin Üstüne 1:45

08. Karsilama 2:15

09. Çadirimin Üstüne (Da Capo) 4:20

10. Naciye 2:00

11. Kürt Ali 4:40

Baritone Saxophone – Gunnar Bergsten

Bass – Ove Gustavsson

Drums, Darbuka – Okay Temiz

Trumpet, Piano, Darbuka – Maffy Falay

Violin – Salih Baysal

Turkish folk material.

Recorded March 23rd, 1972 at Jazzhus Montmartre, Copenhagen.

Free Jazz with turkish flavours! The beginning violin tone is quite jarring to me but when the music evolves and the rest of the band joins in the violin fits right in. The band joins towards the end of the first side and the group continues to play in full force to the end of the second side. I really liked the jam'ish and very rhytmical presentation. Okay Temiz really holds down the grooves, as usual. Even though the track listing says otherwise the whole album feels like a single tune, just changing periodically. Definitely worth a listen, definitely a unique view of free jazz.

Recorded on legendary Copenhagen jazz ground a mere week after ”Live i Sverige '72” and released in the same year, this is like a companion volume to the previous album. ”Live at Jazzhus Montmartre” captures Sevda in an even more expressive mood; the music is rawer and with an even greater Turkish emphasis. The playing is so intense it's almost dangerous – when at their most frenzied, I almost want to duck not to get hit in the head from the debris and splinters flying off the music. An incredible album.

From Jazz I Sverige ’72, Maffy Falay took a stripped-down version of Sevda and Salih Baysal across Europe, stopping over in Copenhagen, at Jazzhus Montmartre (1972) to record this live performance. Although there is a quintet, what sticks in the mind is the high and lonesome wail of Baysal’s violin. Falay had curated a myriad Turkish folk tunes and he opens the book on them here, virtually handing the floor to Baysal to play all of them virtually by himself; or at least that’s how the listener will remember the album to be – so imposing a presence is the violinist’s. Also, quite unbeknownst to many, the drummer Okay Temiz was extending his footprint into the nascent “World Music” planet. Sitting behind a very unusual looking drums-set made from beaten copper, clad in a variety of patterned shirts, Temiz brings a delicate balance between the music he played with Don Cherry rhythms and his deeper Turkish sensibility to this recording. “Ya Mustafa” is, perhaps, the most memorable song on this recording.

Sevda - 1972 - Jazz I Sverige '72

Sevda

1972

Jazz I Sverige '72

01. Taksim 2:35

02. Hicaz Dolap 2:50

03. Tamzara 11:40

04. Batum 5:25

05. Karadeniz 5:20

06. Makadonya 8:30

07. Çifte Telli 8:05

08. Karsilama 3:40

Baritone Saxophone, Flute – Gunnar Bergsten

Bass – Ove Gustavsson

Drums, Darbuka – Okay Temiz

Darbuka – Akay Temiz

Tenor Saxophone, Flute – Bernt Rosengren

Trumpet, Flugelhorn, Piano, Flute – Maffy Falay

Violin – Salih Baysal

Recorded at TV-2, Swedish Radio, Stockholm March 15th, 1972.

Sevda is a unique fusion of Turkish music and Swedish jazz, which grooves naturally in exotic time signatures (like 7/8 and 9/4), blending textures, rhythms and swinging improvisations into an exciting whole. It was recorded live at a TV studio, and at the time nobody had any idea it would be issued as a record. On drums is the great Okay Temiz, who also played with Don Cherry for some time (as well as did Maffy Falay)

One of my all time favourite bands operating on the progg/jazz scene, led by Turkish trumpeter Maffy Falay and featuring fellow countryman and drummer Okay Temiz, Fläsket Brinner saxophonist Gunnar Bergsten, and jazz pianist Bernt Rosengren to name a few of Sevda's original members.

Sevda was a very powerful unit, strikingly vital, organic, dynamic – everything you could ask for from a top notch jazz outfit. The Turkish harmonies enrich the music immensely, creating a tension field that is almost unique to Sevda (almost, because Okay Temiz's albums under the Oriental Wind banner were rather similar to Sevda).

If, as Whitney Balliett once suggested that “The French are old hands at introducing other cultures to themselves” and indeed to Europe (as Edmund Wilson said of Hippolyte Taine’s 1872 book Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise) then the Swedes are most certainly responsible for what is now the World Music phenomenon. To be exact, it was Don Cherry who first coined the term “World Music” to describe the music he had begun to play in the 1970’s. The iconic Swedish drummer Bengt Berger clearly remembers that. And even if – as has been rightfully posited in Jan Bruér’s excellent booklet notes in this collector’s edition of Sevda – the expression may have been used by others, it was certainly Cherry’s music that sparked the fire that has been raging ever since and has now enveloped the rest of the world as well.

Bengt Berger should know. He was in that seminal band led by Don Cherry. Berger went on to lead a band of his own not long after touring Europe with Cherry in the 1970’s. The band he led was called Rena Rama and the music if the music on their eponymously titled album is any indication, then the Swedes not only caught onto Cherry’s ideas very early but also introduced “World Music” not only to Europe, but back to the Indian subcontinent where they played more than once between the album’s release in 1973 and the mid-1980’s. In fact it was in 1984 (or 1986) that Don Cherry got up from within the audience, his fingers wrapped around his pocket trumpet, and ascended the music stage at Bombay’s Brabourne stadium to play with his old Swedish friends again.

This first fabulous live album by Sevda, does not include any of the music made by Don Cherry, or Bengt Berger or Rena Rama. Moreover, Moki Cherry, the Swedish artist, set designer and musician wife of Don Cherry isn’t included either. But there’s a stronger, Swedish connection for “World Music” of the day. However, it is this all-things-Swedish catalyst that probably hastened the chain reaction that exploded into World Music, whose thunder and lightning has been echoing all over the globe from the late 1960’s. This time Turkey has been drawn into the vortex only to emerge in the viscerally exciting music by the multi-instrumentalist Maffy Falay and Sevda.

Like Don Cherry’s own album for Caprice Records, Organic Music Society (made inside the Bucky Tent in Stockholm, Sevda was playing the Swedish music festival circuit from the end of the 1960’s. Maffy Falay had brought in his horns and reeds and was sitting in on piano, Bernt Rosengren and Gunnar Bergsten augmented the woodwinds section and Ove Gustafsson is on bass. Falay, who was already playing with fellow Turks Okay and Akay Temiz on drums and darbuka, brought in the Turkish violinist Salih Baysal to accentuate the “folksy” sound of the group. The move proved pivotal and Sevda was no longer a curiosity but one of the most popular bands on the music festival circuit in Sweden. Caprice jumped in and the producers made these tapes at Jazz | Sverige ’72. It’s as if Time is standing still, or at least the speed at which the earth is revolving on its axis has been halved. “Taksim”, a solo violin piece performed by Baysal throws the switch. The music that follows is absolutely transcendental especially the maddeningly beautiful “Makadonya”.