Oregon

Oregon, the band which has been existing for more than three decades, is well known for crossing borders of musical genres, combining stylistic means of jazz with those of classical and world music from the very beginning, playing world jazz, and being open to both Indian music and folk with Celtic elements.

Music of Another Present Era remains Oregon's most enduring masterwork. Achieving a perfect balance of musical traditions from the East and West, ancient to future, they set the stage not only for a new transculturalism in jazz, but also created a lasting template for the fusion of musics from world traditions that would flower over a decade later. […] This is fusion music, to be sure, but it's the kind of fusion musicians have been trying unsuccessfully to emulate for decades. Music of Another Present Era is one of the most poetic and groundbreaking records to be released in the 1970s. ~Thom Jurek, All Music

Recorded at State Recording House GDRZ, Studio 5, Moscow, Russia in June 1999. The Moscow double-album is brilliantly conceived and executed. McCandless' compositions “Round Robin” and “All That Mornings Will Bring” sound as if they were written for this kind of expanded palette. Towner's “The Templars” (once again a visit to the medieval) is magnificent, spacious and emerges with great pomp and circumstance at the hands of quartet and orchestra. Moore's “Arianna” is completely reborn at the hands of the musicians of the quartet and the orchestra. “Icarus”, Towner's classic piece, which made its debut performance with the Paul Winter Consort and the symphonic orchestra at Indianapolis in 1970 comes alive with myth and legend, tone, texture and melted wax, here on Moscow. “Spirit's Of Another Sort”, “Anthem” (from Towner's solo album of the same name), “Firebat” and “Zephyr” are newly recast gems, but the album also belongs to “Free-form Piece For Orchestra and Improvisers”.

Although it doesn't state it anywhere on the CD itself, this one is a bit different from all of the Oregon projects before or since. This recording on the Vanguard label is from 1979 and has a very good recorded sound for the time. I would say this is my very favorite Oregon recording ("Winter Light" comes a close second), from the bands first decade, my favorite recording at least up until the time they recorded for the ECM lable in the mid 1980's. Oregon has a large body of compositions, many of which have been recorded several times at intervals years apart, with slight changes in arrangement. However this recording has 9 pieces that I don't recall the band has recorded since, so there are no familiar well-known Oregon pieces here.

A musical score created by The Oregon Trio for a production of the Shakespeare play by the Oregon Shakespeare Theater in Ashland, Oregon in 1998.