Dave Holland Albums - Conference of the Birds, Homecoming, Gateway 2, Extended Play: Live at Birdland, in the Moment, the Razor's Edge (Paperback)

Commentary (music and lyrics not included). Chapters: Conference of the Birds, Homecoming, Gateway 2, Extended Play: Live at Birdland, in the Moment, the Razor's Edge. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 22. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Conference of the Birds is an album by the Dave Holland Quartet, recorded in 1972 and released in 1973. It is jazz bassist Holland's second collaboration with composer and saxophonist Anthony Braxton, as well as his second album on ECM Records. The Penguin Guide to Jazz selected the album as part of its "Core Collection," and gave it a rating of four stars (of a possible four). Jazz critic Michael G. Nastos called the album "'s finest hour" and "definitive progressive music." The liner notes describe how birds would congregate each morning outside Holland's London apartment and join with one another in song. Holland's compositions for the album had been performed at a New York City concert by a group including Randy Brecker on trumpet, Michael Brecker on tenor sax, Ralph Towner on guitar, Holland on bass, and Barry Altschul on percussion; "Braxton and Rivers, however, were chosen for the recording as better able to respond to the opportunist disjunctions offered within Holland's compositions." The first track, "Four Winds," is the only piece in "closed form" (with a set musical form repeated for each chorus and the musicians playing over the harmonic changes); the others are "open form," with a theme stated at the beginning to set key, tempo, and mood and the players free to improvise in whatever direction they choose. Stuart Nicholson writes: "Conference of the Birds emerged as a definitive statement of swinging free expression. It was, in essence, a return to the rugged discipline of early 1960s free improvising by working off melodic foundations usi...http: //booksllc.net/?id=16490248