Originally released by the Folkstudio label in 1976, this is infectiously exuberant, eighteen-piece spiritual jazz in the tradition of the Arkestra, the Organic Music Society, and Mingus; strung between the post-war big bands and the Italian outernationalism of projects like Aktuala and Futuro Antico, drawing in music from Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

In 1979, just after the release of Prati Bagnati Del Monte Analogo, Messina was asked to perform at the Teatro Quartiere in Milan.
‘Due to the limited availability of key technical features, ’ he recalls, ‘it would have been too complicated to perform Prati Bagnati, and therefore I opted for these three pieces instead. We had never actually tried them all together, so I thought about renting a recording studio the previous afternoon. In that way, we could rehearse in a suitable place and use the opportunity to record the music on tape.’
The music has an unadorned, almost improvisational feel, skewered by passages of arpeggiated, meditative piano. Its chords layered and unfurled in real time via a reel-to-reel tape machine, the track Reflex recalls Steve Reich’s mesmeric phase-shifting works of the 1960s.

Janneau contributed to François Tusques’ 1965 landmark Free Jazz sessions. He was a stalwart of Jef Gilson’s big band in the years leading up to this first album as leader in 1975, with Jenny-Clark on bass and percussions, Bernard Lubat on drums, and Michel Grailler from Magma on spaced-out synths. The compositions are all FJ originals: check the monumental Droit d’Asile, the spooky Theme For An Unknown Island, and the homage Mr J.C. For Ever.

Their first LP, released in 1973 after six years together, with the first drummer Pierre Guyon having been replaced by Christian Rollet in 1970. Brilliant, roiling and free, with a celebratory lyricism to its grapplings with Cecil Taylor, Gary Peacock, Milford Graves and co, and a wheeling melancholia straight from Ornette.

‘The trio’s sensitive interplay and attention to detail are now unrivalled in jazz… They have developed a naturally cinematic quality that draws on the sense of unease that lurks beneath the everyday’ (Mike Hobart, Financial Times).
It opens with a version of Boubacar Traore’s Baba Drame, and ends resonantly with We Shall Overcome, taking in Bacharach & David and Billy Strayhorn, Monk and Delta Blues along the way.

This 1955 date aka I’ll Be Seeing You is the only full release by this brilliant bebop trumpeter who reminds everyone of Chet Baker. The wonderful Allen Eager’s here, too. (‘Best of the grey boys,’ said Pres.)

‘An innovative and deeply moving blend of spiritual jazz and South Asian devotional music’, with contributions from Esperanza Spalding, Vijay Iyer, Shabaka Hutchings, Immanuel Wilkins…

Beautifully executed as usual by Gearbox, this is the first release of a 1968 BBC Jazz In Britain recording, forerunner of the classic Argo LP Heart Is A Lotus, issued two years later. With Don Rendell and Ian Carr.

Luminessence Series.

Top-notch mid-seventies spiritual jazz; steeped in Trane. Championed by Jazzman.
Billy — aka William X, nowadays Khalim Zarif — was a Jazz Messenger. Around the same time as this recording, he was one of the Cosmic Brotherhood supporting Jackie McLean on his New York Calling LP, also for SteepleChase; another lost classic.
Warmly recommended.