Dreams Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Ensemble

Track 1 recorded at SuperDeluxe, Tokyo, November 26 2018. Tracks 4-5 recorded at Tokuzo, Nagoya, November 27 2018. Tracks 2-3, 6 recorded at takutaku, Kyoto, November 28 2018.

GRAMMY-winning composer, bandleader, and pianist Arturo O’Farrill has fulfilled what he calls “a lifelong dream” with his signing to Blue Note Records and the release of his Blue Note debut …dreaming in lions… The album finds O’Farrill leading a colorful 10-piece assemblage he calls The Afro-Latin Jazz Ensemble, a scaled-down edition of his renowned Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra. The program encompasses two inspired multi-movement suites that O’Farrill has conceived in collaboration with the Cuban Malpaso Dance Company: “Despedida,” a meditation on farewells, and “Dreaming in Lions,” inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s novella The Old Man and the Sea.

The selections contained in the Chicago Afro-Latin Jazz Ensemble's fine Blueprints are wonderfully reminiscent of a musical recipe that simmers slowly and then bursts into a fiery buffet. This is a marvelously entertaining offering by a group of outstanding musicians, writers and arrangers. Forget the designations "Latin" and "jazz." This is outstanding, high-energy music. The recipe here is exclusively spicy Latin with wonderful, generous dollops of inventive, hard jazz playing across the board. While the Latin (and one reggae) grooves might sound familiar, it's the playing and exciting soloing over those rhythmic/harmonic structural underpinnings that blow white-hot. There's an air of machismo that runs throughout Blueprints from note one…

Listening to just the first minute of Stephen Scott's "Rainbows, I" (the album's first track) will shatter your notion of what piano music should sound like. With a heavy nod to the minimalism of Steve Reich, Scott and his group of students from Colorado College created one of the most memorable and original compositions of bowed piano strings ever recorded. Here, the white and black keys are overshadowed by a handful of musicians crawling over the open-topped instrument, armed with Popsicle sticks glued with horsehair (the perfect bow for reaching into a grand's tight corners).

Old And New Dreams - Old And New Dreams (1979) {ECM 1154}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 218 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 109 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 7 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1979 ECM Records | ECM 1154
Jazz / Post Bop / Avant-Garde Jazz

The second recording by Old and New Dreams was, like its first from three years earlier, named after the group. Trumpeter Don Cherry, tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman, bassist Charlie Haden, and drummer Ed Blackwell made for a mighty team, performing high-quality free bop in the tradition of the Ornette Coleman Quartet (of which they were all alumni). In addition to two of Ornette's tunes (including a lengthy exploration of "Lonely Woman"), the musicians each contributed an original of their own. Stirring music in a setting that always brought out the best in each of these musicians.