An extraordinary enterprise … As an experience of the sounds and styles of French organ culture this boxed set, it seems to me, is indispensable … the body of music is mostly, here, not created but simply made alive by the apt choice of instruments … it is a resource to which to return with delight.
Of Miles Davis's numerous live releases from the 1970s, this one rates as less essential, but it does provide further insight into the fascinating chronology of Davis' music as he entered the final stages of his pre-retirement "electric period." The band heard here includes drummer Al Foster, electric bassist Michael Henderson, electric guitarists Pete Cosey and Reggie Lucas, percussionist Mtume, and saxophonist Dave Liebman. Several of these players are heard to better effect one year earlier on the more colorful and varied In Concert: Live at Philharmonic Hall recording, which featured material from On the Corner, A Tribute to Jack Johnson, and Get Up With It. By 1973, Davis' music had increasingly focused on mesmerizing static harmonies, electronics, and dense polyrhythmic layers that danced around the core of Foster's surging beats and Henderson's subterranean throb.
The Masters of the French Organ - from Louis XIII to the Monarchy of July: from Jehan Titelouze to Alexandre-Pierre-François Boëly, from the early seventeenth century to the end of royalty in 1848, an anthology of the French organ in box 8cds, elaborated from the records of the Temperaments collection.