Label: Formalibera

イタリアの名門アヴァンレーベルAlga Marghenが立ち上げた新しいフリージャズレーベル"Formalibera"の音源!!60年代後半から70年代前半にかけて多くの作品の残したJohn Tchicai。本作はこのレーベルが発掘した、世界最高峰のコンサートホールの一つであるロンドンのウィグモア・ホールで行われた1968年10月1日ライブ録音を音盤化したもの。テープ劣化により一部が消えているもののBBCが残していた大変貴重な記録であり、絶頂期を迎えたバンドによる白熱のフリーフォーム・インプロヴィゼーションが展開。厚手のボール紙にラミネート加工を施した重厚カバー仕様。

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John Tchicai (1936-2012) was one of the most visionary free jazz saxophonists of the 20th century - a rare artist whose voice stood apart even among giants. Born in Copenhagen to a Danish mother and a Congolese father, his path to New York came through a chance encounter at a socialist youth festival in Helsinki, where Bill Dixon and Archie Shepp heard him play and urged him to make the move. A simple gesture that changed the history of jazz.

Arriving in the city in late 1962, Tchicai rapidly entered the innermost circle of first-wave American free jazz: co-founding the New York Contemporary Five alongside Shepp, Don Cherry, Don Moore, and J.C. Moses, then the legendary New York Art Quartet with Roswell Rudd, Milford Graves, and Lewis Worrell. He appears on Albert Ayler's New York Eye and Ear Control, Shepp's Four for Trane, Coltrane's Ascension - the full constellation. Back in Denmark from 1966, he co-founded the Instant Composers Pool and launched Cadentia Nova Danica, a radical cross-disciplinary orchestra whose two LPs - Cadentia Nova Danica (Polydor, 1968) and Afrodisiaca (MPS, 1969) - remain legendary documents.

Now FormalIibera unearths a live recording from London's Wigmore Hall, October 1st, 1968 - BBC-taped, partially lost to tape erasure, and all the more precious for it. Four pieces, eight players, and a band at the absolute peak of their powers: furious, rich, and dense, moving between freeform improvisation and African touchstones before erupting into incandescent free improvisation. Essential archival work, beautifully presented.