Keith Tippett

Pianist, composer, arranger, and bandleader Keith Tippett's first album, You Are Here…I Am There, was issued in 1969, and received some notice as the work of an ambitious composer looking for a voice. Apparently, by the time he recorded Dedicated to You, But You Weren't Listening, which was released in 1971, he'd found it in spades. Tippett has become one of the great lights of the British free jazz movement, and for more than 30 years he has led groups of improvising musicians, from two to 40 in number, on some of the most exploratory and revelatory harmonic adventures in musical history - whether those in America know it or not. The band here is comprised of 11 pieces, including Elton Dean, Robert Wyatt, Nick Evans, Roy Babbington, Gary Boyle, Neville Whitehead, and others…

Spanning a three-year period between 2017-2019, Keith Tippett and Matthew Bourne performed a series of two-piano concerts - nearly all of which were recorded. Discus Music is incredibly proud to make the fruits of this vital work available as a double album, comprising of two beautifully-recorded performances from 2019: a set of individual studio pieces recorded at Leeds Conservatoire is paired with a remarkable live performance from Daylight Music at Union Chapel, London; which sadly proved to be Keith's final public statement.

These six previously unreleased live studio tracks were recorded for broadcast purposes in January and August of 1970, between the group’s two now seminal British jazz/rock releases for the Polydor and Vertigo labels respectively, 1969’s ‘You Are Here… I Am There’ and 1971’s ‘Dedicated to You but You Weren't Listening’.

"Sound On Stone is an act of love comparable to Alice Coltrane’s completion of tracks she and John had worked on together before his death. The results are profoundly moving, full of beauty and surprise."

Hugh Hopper, Elton Dean, Keith Tippett, Joe Gallivan - Cruel But Fair (1977) {One Way Records OW 31373 rel 1995}
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© 1977, 1995 Compendium Records / One Way Records | OW 31373
Jazz / Experimental / Post Bop / Art Rock / Modern Creative

Alto saxophonist Elton Dean and bassist Hugh Hopper established their reputations with the groundbreaking jazz-rock band Soft Machine in the '70s and have continued to be strong forces in the British free-jazz scene. On this excel1ent 1995 release, they team up with pianist Keith Tippett and drummer Joe Gallivan to create a wide-ranging program of bristling, exploratory jazz and innovative electronic music.

Keith Tippett's debut album as a bandleader was and remains a rather remarkable affair in that it was the first engagement of British young people who came up in rock, pop, and blues bands to play jazz. Tippett himself is a classically trained musician who came to jazz via Mingus, George Russell, Coltrane, and Pharoah Sanders, but his compositional element also owes to composers such as Darius Milhaud, Vaughan Williams, and Frederick Delius. His front-line group contains the Soft Machine's Elton Dean, plus Nick Evans and Marc Charig, while his rhythm section contains drummer Alan Jackson and bassist Jeff Clyne - whose bowing sensibilities are not only highly developed but provocative as well…

The Lindsay Quartet have set a high standard of Tippett interpretation, with that special authority that stems from working on the music with the composer. Whatever else Tippett has done, he has not inhibited these players: their performances are characterized by a distinctive freshness and spontaneity, a well-balanced homogeneity of texture and a fine sense of rhythmic flow, essential if the music is not to coagulate around its multitude of contrapuntal details.

Julie Tippetts - Sunset Glow (1975) {Utopia–Blueprint BP317CD rel 1999}
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© 1975, 1999 Utopia / Blueprint Records | BP317CD
Jazz / Modern Creative / Jazz Rock / Canterbury Scene / Progressive Jazz

After leaving Brian Auger's band and becoming the musical and life partner of pianist/composer Keith Tippett, Julie Tippetts issued Sunset Glow, her first solo recording, in 1974 on the Polydor label. After her soul, pop, and R&B beginnings, Tippetts redeveloped her voice, taking it and her music in a different direction. She began to extend its reach in improvisation, breath control, and uncommon phrasing. She is one of the most compelling and original singers in recorded music's history. Sunset Glow is a curious recording, one that walks the razor's edge of composition and improvisation.