Divine Flute

For this quartet date, the great and innovative pianist/composer Andrew Hill performs "Here's That Rainy Day," and his powerful 25-minute opus "Divine Revelation," and three more concise originals with a quartet; an alternate take of "July 10th" was added to the CD reissue. In addition to Hill, bassist Chris White and drummer Leroy Williams, the set features a completely obscure but reasonably talented altoist (Jimmy Vass) who also is heard on soprano and flute and seemed to have really dug into the essence of Andrew Hill's complex but logical music.

John Cage’s innovative work and unorthodox ideas profoundly affected Western music during the latter half of the 20th century, and this second of two volumes (volume 1 can be heard on Naxos 8.559773) concludes Katrin Zenz’s survey of his complete works for flute. The earlier chromatic compositions include an astonishing variety of playing techniques and a bewildering rhythmic complexity, while the elements of chance in the later works result in music that is always undergoing kaleidoscopic processes at once arbitrary and intensely focussed in form and expression.