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.

Tropico (with Chikara Ueda) - Mellow Peanuts, 1978 [by request, limited time FLAC]

 

Info here.  Pretty pedestrian instrumental funky stuff for my taste with nothing much to cling to.  But I am well aware it's incredibly popular and in demand, as it was requested before. I find, especially, the boingy synth melody sound that shows up here and there really hard to swallow.

The best I could come up with is Una Sera di Tokyo with its very Italian soundtracky sound:

The title track is quite representative, rightly or wrongly so:

Request: Elliot Freedman Group - Bands of Merriment, Vol.1, West Coast Quintet Live [by request limited time only]

 

With regards to these guys, discogs says:

Profile:

The Elliot Freedman Group advances a harmonically elegant, compositionally uncompromising, non-canonical adventurous jazz.  “Very, very good avant fusion” Guitar Player magazine

Of course the title of this one is either ironic or ridiculous, you choose.  As described, it's tight fusion with some contemporary jazz elements (eg acoustic jazz piano).  His personal style is very similar to Alan Holdsworth, but I find the sound of the guitar which is somehow passed through a synth (?) quite distracted sometimes with its twangy whistling aspect.  You'll see what I mean when you listen to it.

For ex., the first track, Finding Form For:

Back to Fumitaka Anzai in 1984's Chikkun Takkun

 

I posted Anzai's first from 1982 here, and as mentioned earlier I've always really loved that one.  So I was highly curious to hear this second album-- if it's as interesting as the first one.  Needless to say, we can answer with a partial negative.  But the search is always worth it, given the gems that turn up here and there.  You can also see from the database page, kind of, that there is a mixture of artists doing the tracks here.  Though I did give up, short attention span as is common nowadays, trying to collate which ones are from Anzai and if they're the good ones.

Anyways, the whole sounds very much like a library video game album, with all the tracks a minute or two long.  Some of the better ones do have prog bases to them, for ex. the A 6 which is Stravinskyesque dissonances:

A lot of electronic noodling appears, as on B1:

The libraryish B15:

Phaedrus Triptych 2017 limited time only, requested

This one-off album or rather CD is interesting because it's from Spanish keyboardist / composer Carlos Plaza Vegas, who I've known well for decades from his band called Kotobel -- one of my favorite 'recent' prog bands.  This work is definitely little known, and unfairly so really.  Is there anything fair at all in music, these days, in 2025?  I don't think so, personally.

The track called Dawn definitely sounds like it comes right off a Phaedrus album, it amazes me when I think of all the work and thought that went into this composition, with the originality of it, the freshness of the chords, the sheer creativity of it:

While a track called Perpetual Movement illustrates the classical chamber side of things, like the Japanese TEE just posted:

Stunningly too, all the music from beginning to end is worth listening to carefully, there's not a single weak spot on there!