Jazz | Fusion 814 Items

The Orient Express' sole LP from 1969 stands today as an early experiment in world fusion - and a pretty successful one at that, at least artistically. Guitarist Guy Duris is a Frenchman who became enamored with the oud, a classical Arabian guitar. Belgian Bruno Giet is a bass player with a rock background. Iranian Farshid Golesorkhi is an award-winning percussionist in the Persian tradition. As a trio, they only left 35 minutes for posterity, but these minutes are filled with interesting ideas and kitschy songs, all originals.

Sticker on Gatefold cover.

British Jazz Masterpiece from 1965 featuring Neil Ardley, Ian Carr, Barbara Thompson and John Hiseman

180 gram black vinyl. Reissue for the first time Worldwide In the mid-60’s London scene, the NJO was one of those unavoidable and big-band groups (originally started as Clive Burrows Orchestra), where almost everyone who was anyone on the scene or almost transited through the group, which was normally the vehicle for composer Neil Ardley. You’ll find in the WR album, among others, stellar names like Ian Carr (of RCQ and Nucleus fame), Barb Thompson, Tony Reeves, John Hiseman (all three of future Colosseum fame), Trevor Watts (future Amalgam) plus a bunch more of lesser-known, but no-less gifted musicians like Paul Rutherford, etc. The line-up would fluctuate to include many other household names.

The New Jazz Orchestra was formed in December 1963, its name reflecting both the youth of its members - their average age was only 23 - and their mission to perform the new kind of orchestral jazz that was then developing in America but still to be heard in Britain. The personnel included such (then) non-jazz instruments as flute, horn and tuba in addition to the standard brass, saxes and rhythm line-up of the big band. This is the NJO's first album, recorded in March 1965 before an invited audience to make the young band feel at ease. The NJO was the offspring of a popular weekend jazz club, the "Jazzhouse" based at the Green Man, Blackheath (demolished to make way for Allison Close) where the "house" band was the Ian Bird Quintet (initially comprising Ian Bird, tenor sax; Clive Burrows, baritone sax; Johnny Mealing, piano; Tony Reeves, bass and Trevor Tomkins, drums - Mealing and Tomkins left to join the newly formed Rendell-Carr Quintet and were succeeded by Paul Raymond and Jon Hiseman respectively. The ensemble featured many London-based jazz musicians, such as Harry Beckett, Jack Bruce, Ian Carr, Dave Gelly, Michael Gibbs, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Jon Hiseman, Henry Lowther, Don Rendell, Frank Ricotti, Paul Rutherford, Barbara Thompson, Trevor Tomkins, Michael Phillipson, Les Carter, Tom Harris, Trevor Watts and Lionel Grigson. Ardley, Gibbs, Carter, Rutherford, Michael Garrick, and composer Mike Taylor all contributed pieces and arrangements.

Under exclusive license of Universal Music Portuga

A deep dive into the one of most collectable jazz catalogues in the world, a selection of some of the rarest and most sought-after recordings from the 60s and 70s, a time when British jazz began to find its own identity. Drawn from the iconic labels of Decca, Deram, Argo, EMI Columbia/Lansdowne Series, Fontana, Mercury, & Philips. If one were asked to pick an album that represented the best of British jazz in the 1960s, Le Déjeuner Sur l’Herbe by the New Jazz Orchestra would be a serious contender. Recorded in September 1968, it draws together many of the key streams that had developed in British jazz in the preceding years, and also presages much of what was to come. Notwithstanding the line-up, which includes some of the very best British jazz musicians directed by an inventive and ingenious leader in Neil Ardley, the session features pieces written by the most distinctive jazz composers active in Britain at that time alongside idiosyncratic interpretations of works by John Coltrane and Miles Davis. And it’s all captured beautifully by engineer Howard Barrow and producer Tony Reeves and it features a stella cast of some of the greatest musicians, not just from that era or genre but beyond; Jack Bruce, who would become one of the founding members of Cream, Barbara Thompson, Ian Carr, Michael Gibbs, Dave Gelly, Dick Heckstall-Smith and Jon Hiseman, who went on to form one of the greatest jazz/progressive/rock bands – Colosseum.

Monarch Pressing.
Still shrink wrapped but opened.
Record is close to VG+.