The Jazz Composer's Orchestra (album)

The Jazz Composer's Orchestra (album)

The Jazz Composer's Orchestra (also referred to as Communications) is a double album from the Jazz Composer's Orchestra recorded over a period of six months with the Austrian trumpeter Michael Mantler as a leader and producer. Many of the key figures in avant-garde jazz from the time contributed on the album including Don Cherry, Pharaoh Sanders, Gato Barbieri, Larry Coryell, Steve Swallow, Roswell Rudd, Charlie Haden and Carla Bley, who was Mantler's wife at the time.

The album's finale features a two-part concerto for Cecil Taylor and orchestra of which Brian Owelnick's Allmusic states "The breadth of this piece, its expansiveness, and its tension between order and chaos is one of the single high-water marks of avant-garde jazz. Communications is a masterwork in and of itself and laid the basis for stunning work by others in decades hence, notably Barry Guy and his London Jazz Composer's Orchestra. It's an essential document for anyone interested in avant jazz and late-20th century creative music"

Read more about The Jazz Composer's Orchestra (album):  Track Listing, Personnel

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