Fusion I

GRAMMY Award-winning keyboardist/composer/producer Jeff Lorber recalls seeing guitarist Mike Stern during his much-ballyhooed tenure with Miles Davis in the early ‘80s. “I’ve been a fan of his for a long time,” said the keyboardist, who was touring hard in support of his hit records Wizard Island and It’s a Fact in those analog days. “Jeff Lorber Fusion and Miles Davis were playing some of the same festivals back then, so I got to hear him play.” For his part, Stern offered, “To be honest, I was aware of him, and had heard a bunch of good things, but I had never really checked him out. We were just in different orbits, me and Jeff.”

With song structures similar to Mahavishnu Orchestra and electric-era Return to Forever, Michal Urbaniak's Fusion III appealed to the same fusion-buying clientele. What most distinguishes this music from that of its contemporaries was the unique vocalizing of Urbaniak's wife, Ursula Dudziak. She could sound at times like a Polish Flora Purim, at other times like a synthesized presence from another world. On this recording, Urbaniak's playing is fresh and engaging, and his compositions occasionally sound like Frank Zappa's instrumental work from this same era. John Abercrombie and Larry Coryell turn in blistering guitar passages, and bassist Anthony Jackson and drummer Steve Gadd provide a funkified rhythmic foundation.

Polish violinist Michal Urbaniak’s recording Fusion was aptly named. Riding a wave of jazz-rock music, Urbaniak produced this enigmatic recording at once lyrical and noisy. Fusion is made up of seven originals, six of Urbaniak’s and one of keyboard player Wojciech Karolak. This music is percussion intensive and keyboard heavy. All compositions are very Rock oriented. Urbaniak’s violin is played with a variety of electronic modifications including phase shift and wah-wah. Urbaniak’s compositions contain Eastern European influences. The effect of these Eastern European tonalities results in an influence similar to Katchaturian scales in John Coltrane’s “sheets of sound”. This disc would be of interest to the generation following Urbaniak’s, listeners who are listening backwards to see where today’s music originally came from.