In the Dark

Today’s the day for our infamous annual departmental Christmas Lunch, which last year started at 12.30 and carried on until 3.30 the following morning (at least for me and a few other diehards). I thought I’d mark the occasion this year with an appropriate piece of music featuring one of my favourite jazz artists, saxophonist Eric Dolphy. This is the title track of the pioneering free jazz album Out to Lunch. This album is without doubt one of the high points of 1960s avant-garde jazz, primarily because of Dolphy’s extraordinary playing but also because of the brilliance of the other musicians. It’s a virtuoso performance all round, and it’s especially hard to believe that the superb drummer Tony Williams was only 18 when this track was recorded!

Unfortunately the original track is a bit too long for Youtube so this is in two parts; you’ll have to click through for the second bit.

Anyway, this would definitely be one of my Desert Island Discs and it probably also serves as an accurate musical illustration of the state my brain will be in later today. Enjoy!

This entry was posted on December 19, 2011 at 9:27 am and is filed under Jazz with tags Eric Dolphy, Free Jazz, Out to Lunch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.