Bill Mays and Bob Shanks return in Explorations 1980: A Journey into the world of flute and piano music

Lovely cover.  So reminiscent of the times...

Here's the information for this one.

The first side is the suite composed by Bill Mays which is a bit all over the place, disconnected, a bit ADHD, in the sense it mixes classical composition, sometimes baroque even Mozartian, not at all amateur but a lotta Amadeus, with the more fanciful flights of flute jazz we have heard before on other fusion records, especially the Europas.  But it's strictly acoustic piano from Bill with the flute from Bob Shanks.

The second side is given over to jazz interpretations of classical pieces, some very famous like the Girl With the Flaxen Hair which has been reinvented so many times in the jazz canon, not sure if you know this CD for example by Israeli group Platina, I remember learning it in the conservatory piano programme and hating the multiple flats that made it so difficult at the time until I realized I could just play it as written and ignore the flats, as if it was in C.  But that's cheating. The whole point about learning piano is the difficulty of it-- as a millenial being would have so much trouble understanding. Wait, what? Not just by watching youtube? That's so dumb...

Going back to side one, Bill's Suite gets better as you go further along, as if moving forward in time from centuries ago to the current (!) 1980 progressive jazz time.  Of forty years back.  The Star Sail of part 4 is just wonderful, note the high virtuosity of Shanks coupled with the very delicate breathing, technically as beautiful musically as anything I've ever heard: