Richard Sussman's Evolution Suite from 2016

 

I posted the Bob Moses-involved album Tributaries from 1978 back here.  Richard Sussman played the piano on that magnificent album, with gorgeous contemporary jazz, but nonetheless inventive compositions.  His own page says:

American jazz bassist, pianist, composer, arranger, and educator, born March 28, 1946 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

To my surprise he was in the protoprog band Elephants Memory, which made a really good debut album back in the late sixties.  Subsequently though if memory serves me correctly, which it usually doesn't anymore, they reverted to basic or commercial rock with nothing progressive.  Looks like he was also briefly in BST which I hope everyone loves as much as me and the Mike Santiago work with Entity, which I posted back here a long time ago (more than a decade ago!), and that one of course is a bone fide masterpiece of US fusion.

Anyways back to this one, which carries on where Tributaries dropped off, with a little more composition, modern classical and atonal, surprisingly, despite appearing almost 30 years later.  Sadly virtually no info on that page but a note inside the package shows the performers' names.

A perfect example is the second movement:

A great point of comparison (if any remember it) is the Moe Koffman Solar Explorations work I posted here, with its 'ideal' trifold mix of classical modern orchestral, big band, and fusion, featuring advanced instrumental compositions, which I still dearly love partly for the fact it's utterly unknown to everyone.  I think on a head to head comparison though the Koffman work is better because of its insane variety, no surprise given the fertile time period from which it emerged fully evolved.

But this too is a beautiful piece of art.  And also completely lost to time.