Back to Pete Robinson (Contraband) with Dialogues for Piano and Reeds, 1972, plus Session II

You might recall I mentioned there were two composers for the Contraband fusionary masterpiece, Pritchard and this gentleman, Pete Robinson.  This record, which came shortly afterwards, it was released in 1972, displays mostly chamber jazz and free jazz.  The compositions are pretty advanced, so much so that they are a bit out of earshot at times and it's difficult to see where the composer was heading to.  It reminds me therefore of the music for dance by Steve Kimmel.

Then I found a later one he performed on for a group called Session II, which is totally the opposite, specifically, fuzak of the worst sort.  So it's interesting to see how experimenting in the earlier days led to the stupidest sort of brain-dead music in the eighties.

From the blurb on the back:

Pete Robinson (3/3/50, Chicago) 
By the age of 16 Pete had studied with Lev Shorr and Michael Tillson Thomas and had attended the Berklee School of Music on a Downbeat scholarship.  In 1966 he joined the Don Ellis Orch. as pianist, remained with the trumpeter for 2 years, then joined the Shelly Manne Quintet for a year.  He has worked or recorded with Ellis, Manne, Howard Roberts, Willie Bobo, Gil Melle, John Klemmer, Oliver Nelson, Thelma Houston, Quincy Jones, Ernie Watts, Tim Weisberg, and many others.  He has done extensive film work with Gil Melle, and in 1971 he composed and performed an electronic music score for the Shakespeare Society's Presentation of The Tempest.
--Wow, that would be worth seeking out, if it exists on LP! -Editor
With D. Pritchard and Brian Moffatt, he formed Contraband in 1970 and has been active with this group ever since, in 1971 recording an album for Epic Records.

In addition, Pete adds quite a bit of interesting information on the music and its composition on the verso.  For the most part though this music is very advanced 'modern classical' and presumably at times wholly improvised with an almost atonal sounding effect.

The track called Serpentine Lament sounds very much Gil Melle:





From the album Session II, the track called Fly by Night is not the best track, but rather, the least awful: