Record Reviews

HOWARD RILEY ~ SYNOPSIS EMANEM 4044 (Barcode: 5030243404421) ~ UK ~ Free Jazz / Improvised Music Recorded: 1973 Released: 2000 This is a reissue of the 5th album by British pianist / composer Howard RileyFind albums by this artist, recorded in a trio format with bassist Barry GuyFind albums by this artist and drummer Tony OxleyFind albums by this artist. The album was originally released on the IncusFind albums on this label label, and this reissue presents the entire session with five tracks, as opposed to the original four tracks album. All the music was composed by Riley. By the time this album was recorded, Riley was already recognized as one of the core members of the young British Avant-Garde, which took the scene by a storm, often vehemently opposed by the British Jazz “establishment”, which included traditional / mainstream musicians and most of the Jazz press. But of course the new music was hardly bothered by anybody’s opinion and exploded rapidly, defining a new Jazz aesthetic, inspired, but completely independent from the American Free Jazz scene, and effectively much closer conceptually to what was happening in Europe at the time on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Spearheaded both by musicians and activist (i.e. club owners, small independent record labels and “radical” journalist), the British Jazz Avant-Garde in the 1970s wrote one of the most glorious chapters in the history of British Jazz, and this album is one of numerous examples of what was happening then, and the three musicians taking part in this recording are key figures of that movement; Riley with his trios, Guy with his London Jazz Composers OrchestraFind albums by this artist and Oxley with his quintets an sextets. The collection of the albums recorded by these musicians alone, recorded between late 1960s and mid-1970s is an overwhelming body of exceptional, revolutionary and often prophetic music. Overall, this is a brilliant example of the British Free Jazz / Improvised Music classic period, which lost nothing of its power and striking, innovative out-of-the-box thinking, which became in time an archetypal specimen of the genre. For British Jazz lovers, who include the Avant-Garde milieu in their favorite pleasures, this is an absolute must of course.

Updated: 17/12/2024Posted: 17/12/2024

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