Kirk Vhalum

This three-CD box set, in producer and then label Boss' weirdly wired brain, encompasses two different sides of Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Discs one and two represent sporadic live recordings of Kirk from 1962 to 1972, all of them previously unreleased and issued courtesy of a Kirk collector named George Bonafacio. These two discs contain Kirk classics such as "Domino," "Blacknuss," and an excerpt from "Three for the Festival," as well as singular Kirk interpretations of "I Say a Little Prayer," "Freddie Freeloader," "Lester Leaps In," "Giant Steps," "Sister Sadie," and more. These two discs are chock-full of stellar performances that are well-recorded despite being fan tapes. The musicians on these dates range from bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pederson to Hilton Ruiz, Jerome Cooper, Tete Montoliu, and many others…

From Roland Kirk's "classical" period, Other Folks' Music is perhaps his most dizzying and troubling recording. Meant to be both a tribute and a pointer for the next move in modern black music, Other Folks' Music is, when all is said and done, a very private altar adorned with much of Kirk's personal iconography. Recorded in 1976 using a fairly large band supplemented by Hilton Ruiz' funky Latin angularity on piano, Kirk created a lament and a testimony for other artists to add to - though no one ever has, and certainly not Wynton Marsalis. The set opens eerily with the deep voice of Paul Robeson scratchily coming from a record player on "Water for Robeson and Williams." The largely chamber piece is a folk melody, mournfully suggestive of a slave song turned in on itself so that it now echoes out over history…

From Roland Kirk's "classical" period, Other Folks' Music is perhaps his most dizzying and troubling recording. Meant to be both a tribute and a pointer for the next move in modern black music, Other Folks' Music is, when all is said and done, a very private altar adorned with much of Kirk's personal iconography. Recorded in 1976 using a fairly large band supplemented by Hilton Ruiz' funky Latin angularity on piano, Kirk created a lament and a testimony for other artists to add to - though no one ever has, and certainly not Wynton Marsalis. The set opens eerily with the deep voice of Paul Robeson scratchily coming from a record player on "Water for Robeson and Williams." The largely chamber piece is a folk melody, mournfully suggestive of a slave song turned in on itself so that it now echoes out over history…

Whether or not the four individual albums packaged with in Aces Back to Back are among Rahsaan Roland Kirk's finest is of no consequence. The fact that they have been assembled in a package that offers the listener a sense of Kirk's development and continuity is the issue here. And in this way, Aces Back to Back is a supreme collection. The four albums included - Left & Right, Rahsaan Rahsaan, Prepare Thyself to Deal With a Miracle, and Other Folks Music - date from 1968 to 1976 and chart dimensional growth of Kirk's completely original music. There's the outsider wizardry of Left & Right that melds the innovations of John Coltrane and Scott Joplin across an entire range of highly experimental yet wonderfully human music. Guests included Roy Haynes, Alice Coltrane, Julius Watkins, and many others in a band that ranged from a quartet to a full orchestra…

Humanité is unlike any album Grammy® Award Winner and Global Recording Artist Kirk Whalum has ever made – the synergistic result of encounters made, and relationships formed onstage and off with some of the finest recording artists from all over the world.