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Bremen To Bridgewater (2 CD set)
Bremen To Bridgewater (2 CD set)
BY McGregor's, Chris Brotherhood Of Breath
- Category:Fusion/Jazz
South African pianist and composer Chris McGregor led racially mixed Blue Notes in South Africa in the early 1960's. But touring and performing proved difficult, and tiring of continuous government harassment, in 1964 McGregor and the bands core members left their South African homeland. They settled in London in 1966 where they befriended many in the citys emerging avant-garde jazz community and made a huge impact on Londons jazz scene. He founded the big-band Brotherhood of Breath in 1970. The Brotherhood was essentially The Blue Notes augmented by musicians of the English avant-garde jazz community. Combining the rhythms of African music with those of American big-band jazz and the free playing of British improv, it produced one of the most vital and life-affirming big-band jazz ever played by anyone, anywhere. (BBCi). The Brotherhood released only a handful of recordings in their lifetime, and the band was rather forgotten, until Cuneiform released Travelling Somewhere in 2001, a 1973 radio broadcast, in 2001, which gained rave reviews. This release, Bremen to Bridgewater, contains two CDs of previously unreleased live recordings made in Germany and England during two very different periods of the bands career. The German radio recordings were made on June 20th, 1971 at Lila Uele, a well known jazz club in Bremen. The English recordings were made at the Bridgewater Arts Center, during two tours that the band made with different lineups in February and November of 1975, and feature some of the very last recordings of trumpeter Mongezi Feza, who died in December of that year. The bands lineups on these recordings are a veritable who's who of British free jazz, and include Harry Beckett, Marc Charig, Elton Dean, Nick Evans, Harry Miller, Louis Moholo, Mike Osborne, Evan Parker, Dudu Pukwana, Alan Skidmore, Gary Windo and others. In addition to the stunning music, this CD features a 12 page booklet with rare and beautiful photos and detailed liner notes by Francesco Martinelli.