Chris Hinze Combination plus Metropole Symphony Orchestra with Parcival, 1976, by request

 

2 alternate covers, as you can see.  I was pretty thrilled when I first saw this as LP because let's be honest, Hinze is a genius and performed with so many brilliant artists in the glory days of fusion of the 70s, particularly in the stuff he put out with Charlie Mariano.  You can see his discography here, and the combination one here. I especially love the 'solos duos trios' releases. I guess subsequently he went in the easy listening and ethnic folky new age directions.

Information here. Hinze of course is the composer of the whole work. Surprisingly it has not been released to CD, ever. Normally I love this kind of stuff where fusion and jazz are combined with a classical orchestra in an original way hopefully with a bit of creative, advanced composing, not baroque or simplistic classical borrowings, like Chuck Mangione did so perfectly well as I mentioned in posts before.  Well I guess what's 'wrong' with this work is that it doesn't get amalgamated seamlessly, with a mixture of classical parts, simple pop-like songs, gospel, and fusion outbursts here and there throughout. Sometimes you get all three types in one track, but not conjoined, just one style followed by another style with abrupt transitions. I thought Deep Purple's famous Concerto for Group and Orchestra suffered from the same affliction, more so actually since it had no fusion aspect, though lots of people love that one. For some incomprehensible reason.

It's also surprising because in the year 1976 one would have expected something stunning since it was such a fertile year for this kind of thing.

Anyways, it ends like this: