With bassist Roberto Miranda and drummer Sonship in 1981.
Featuring a tremendous, side-long reading of Dark Tree.
Sparse, contemplative, classy, playful, deep jazz, recorded in 1983, with the focus on Tapscott’s brilliant piano-playing, accompanied by Aubrey Hart and Kafi Roberts on flute and saxophone. All-analogue; cut directly from the original master tapes. Tip-on sleeve.
Recorded in 1969 to follow up the classic The Giant Is Awakened LP, but never released; now sensationally sprung from the Flying Dutchman archives.
‘World Peace starts with a neo-baroque melody, leading to an eruption in sound, then ends as it began. The beautiful Your Child is the jewel in the crown, skirting modal, deep jazz and introducing elements of free jazz. Opening with bowed bass and piano, For Fats takes you on a journey, dropping into dark, stormy melodies, and developing a driving energy as it progresses.’
Tapscott is joined by the same personnel as Giant: Arthur Blythe, Everett Brown, David Bryant and Walter Savage. Produced by the legendary Bob Thiele.
Available on vinyl for the first time in forty years, Horace Tapscott’s burning, spiritualised 1978 set is a masterpiece of the Los Angeles jazz underground.
It’s drawn from two studio sessions in April 1978, one at Hollywood Sage and Sound, one at United Western. The latter session added a string section, which can be heard on the moody Cal Massey composition Nakatini Suite and Jesse Sharps’ swinging modal trip Peyote Song No. III, with its swirling soprano solo. In keeping with the communal nature of the Arkestra, the other two compositions, The Call and Quagmire Manor at Five A.M. are also by Arkestra members. But at the centre of the music is the builder of the Ark, the visionary whose original call to action started a movement whose legacy continues to this day — Horace Tapscott.
180g audiophile vinyl in a painstakingly reproduced sleeve.
Heed The Call!