Humber College Jazz Ensemble On the Way to Montreux, also from 1977

On this record they are thankfully far more adventurous compared to the previous grab bag of old and stale standards.  In fact if you compare the opening track Basin Street Blues here and formerly you'll see they venture into some pretty funky territory this time out or second take.  The best track occurs in the middle of the second side with a composition by one Jaxon Stock called Jacob's Tailor, & here it is:

Check out the clear classical European education here from the composer, who doesn't appear anywhere elsewhere,  with an initial woodwinds Debussy influence, progressing with the polytonal chord patterns into a Stravinsky score.  And listen to the phenomenal ending that modulates into D, with the bass tuba playing the bottom note.  Really, really, stunning, coming from something so unknown...

More college band music to come soon.

The Humber College Jazz Ensemble in 1977's First Take

From wiki:

Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning is a polytechnic college in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

This record is squarely in the big band tradition, unfortunately, with very little of the progressive spirit that was such a part of the seventies.  Given that we are dealing with students here, not so surprising, though Northern Illinois University was pretty fusionary as we saw earlier.

I'll go with Are You Ready (a Ted Pease composition) as the most listenable track here:





Their next album, however, was really good, coming Wednesday.

Marx, Rootschilt, Tillermann & Amby in the lost Spielgefährten from 1983

   

I earlier posted one of their albums, their best actually, with the huge mega-hit Colder Winds.  Today's is the only one I didn't already have and I was curious about it due to the addition of Amby, who made such a progressive appearance on the Saar compilation.  In any case, I reposted all the albums in question at that time (links still active, I checked).  Today in 1983, recorded in 1982, it seems Amby has lost the crazy progressive spirit...

I will present to you the best composition as an assessment of the overall quality of the whole, which by my estimation is Tillermann's Thalia which you will find in the A7 position:





As always, the harmony vocals are done to perfection throughout.  I understand they are still performing to this day in Germany.

After today I'm going to move away from the endless library record tedium into something totally different, the college jazz bands.  In these records there is always some novelty and interesting twist owing to the youth and energy of these outfits combined with the experience of the leaders.  (In this vein I earlier posted the Northern Illinois Jazz Ensemble.)  For a change.

Piero Umiliani (Moggi) in News! News! News! from 1979 [Sound Work Shop ‎SWS 124]

Another home run from my library collector friend...  wow.

Naturally you can expect some mastery from this particular composer.  Quite a few LPs were released with the odd alias Moggi, many many more under the real name.  Information in the database here.  Some notes from the biography:

Born in July 17, 1926 in Firenze (Florence), Italy.  Died in February 14, 2001 in Roma (Rome), Italy [i.e. aged 75].

Piero Umiliani was an Italian composer of film scores, most famous for his song "Mah Nà Mah Nà" of 1968, that was originally used for a Mondo documentary about Sweden (Svezia, Inferno e Paradiso) and became world-famous in 1977 when performed for The Muppet Show. The song was also an anthem of the Benny Hill show [loved that show!  classic!].  Like many of his Italian colleagues at that time, he composed the scores for many exploitation films in the 1960s and 1970s, covering genres such as spaghetti western, Eurospy, Giallo, and soft sex films. Although not as widely regarded as, for example, Ennio Morricone or Riz Ortolani, he helped form the style of the typical European '60s/'70s jazz-influenced film soundtrack that later experienced a revival in films like Kill Bill and Ocean's Twelve.

In 1959, charged by great Mario Monicelli to compose the OST of ‘I Soliti Ignoti’ (Big Deal on Madonna Street) OST, he gains international recognition.  The score featured Chet Baker on trumpet and it was the first experiment ever of Jazz Music on an Italian comedy movie.  In 1961, he writes the music for ‘Smog’ OST were again he featured Chet Baker artistry along with Helen Merrill shaping a masterpiece in Jazz OST history.  Il 1970, the Master opened Liuto Edizioni Musicali, his own publishing company and Sound Work Shop recording studio... [etc.]

I'll draw your attention to the Mahavishnu-fusionary chromatic minor seconds prevalent in the track called Inchiesta:



Or rather, Le Orme seems to be the influence here.  How stunning it is that this habitually orchestral film composer shows us such mastery in the progressive arena!  Do we all at least now agree that in some of these library records, the music absolutely shocks us with its quality-- particularly in the golden era of the mid-seventies?

While I apologize to all out there for the poor quality of the rip [mono?], I profusely thank the original ripper for his generosity in making this available to all to hear.  Again, not a cheap record, averaging about 150 euros.

At least now you can purchase it with the sure knowledge it's worth every centime of that price...

Jarmo Savolainen from 1985

Two mini masterpieces of Finnish fusion in the ECM style are coming up on deck early this first week of spring for our equinoctial days, like the first sunlight's warmth coming through after a half-year's night over frozen tundra plains.  The little ballad called Lopuksi is, notwithstanding the slight background scratchy noises distracting, just a brilliant little poem of tenderness and emotion like something clearly out of Finnforest in its masterful heyday:





Or perhaps it's Jasper Van't Hof in style who is being channelled here?  Listen to that musical Aurora Borealis!

At the very start of the record you'll instead remark on the similarity to Joachim Kühn with the held-back tempo of cascading, waterfall piano improvisations.  However, the arrangements, with soprano sax and muted trumpets complemented by synthesizer, will get those chills running up and down your back like mice up and down the grandfather clock once they get started, pummelling the gorgeously-wrought chords written out by this masterful arranger, shifting and sparkling like that aurora in the green night sky.  This is absolute coolness with that pure 60s Hancock even-handed intellectual crispness (cf. Speak Like a Child)...  Even the track called Blues at A2 is not that at all, instead, it's a postmodern rendition of a self-referencing encyclopediac fact-finding postgraduate thesis in composition brought to bear on that simplistic & tedious flat style of flat notes and southern drawling.  You won't believe your ears.  That something so unknown could be so good.  More information can be found here.  In fact, how about a quick bio from discogs:

Jarmo Savolainen (born May 24, 1961 in Iisalmi, Finland) was a Finnish jazz pianist, keyboardist and composer. He studied classical piano in Finland and played in local bands, but then continued his studies at the Berkeley College of Music in Boston. 

Of course he studied classical music, you can hear the depth in education throughout this work.  As well you'll note this is the first of four releases in the eighties documented here.  Could the later ones be as good as this one?  I don't know, once we pass that huge fault line of 1985 it seems the progressiveness of the music falls off a cliff into the depths of the earth, doesn't it?  Let's hope that prog crustal rock gets recycled in the mantle to rise up and get built into continental plates in the future again...

Thanks to the Finnish Connection for these shares!  I love you for bringing this sort of sheer beauty into my life-- and I love this composer for having created it....

Enjoy it...