One of the most successful fusings of spoken word and jazz
on disc …
rarely if ever have the two been so inextricably and
magnificently intertwined.
Steven
Loewy, All Music
Guide
Three extracts from The Day of the Dead.
Music
inspired by Malcolm Lowry, author of Under the
Volcano. For additional material see
Lowry, Jazz and The Day of the
Dead, an
article by Graham Collier first published in Swinging
the Maelstrom, based on a talk given at the Malcolm
Lowry conference in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1987.
Featuring
John Carbery
(narrator)
with various groupings from an all-star band including
Harry Beckett and Henry Lowther (trumpets)
Art Themen and Alan Wakeman (saxophones)
Malcolm Griffiths (trombone)
Ed Speight (guitar)
Roger Dean (piano)
Roy Babbington (bass)
Ashley Brown (drums)
Graham Collier (director)
Recording
History
First issued on
double LP by Mosaic, 1978
First issued with some additional material on double CD by
Disconforme, 2001
Remastered by Tom
Leader of LCL Digital
Reassigned
to jazzcontinuum, 2009
The
Tracks
The Day of the
Dead an hour
long suite for narrator and full band was commissioned by
The Ilkley Literature Festival, 1977. The quote in the
subheading is from a review in The Financial Times of the
first performance. The piece uses words from Malcolm
Lowry's Under the Volcano, Dark as
the Grave wherein my Friend is Laid, Forest Path to the
Spring,
and The
Collected Letters of Malcolm Lowry.
October
Ferry a
composition for 12 piece band, was inspired by the
techniques of Malcolm Lowry and named after Lowry's
novel October Ferry to
Gabriola.
It was first performed in Debrecen, Hungary in 1977.
Triptych
inspired by the
painters Mark Rothko, Clifford Styll and Hans Hartung, was
recorded at Ronnie Scott's in 1976 on the same night
as Symphony of Scorpions
and was added for
the double CD.
Eridanus
and
Quanahuac,
again added for the double CD, are named for two Lowry
associated places, and are duos, played by Art Themen
(saxes) and Ed Speight (guitar), recorded at the same time
as Forest Path to the
Spring.
Some
Reviews
One
of the best and most original British jazz records of
1978…
An immensely rewarding experience which deserves the
listener's attention.
Kevin
Henriques, Jazz
Forum (1978)
Extremely
successful ... one's attention is divided almost equally
between story and music.
Barry McRae,
Jazz Journal
International (1978)
A
considerable work, widening the frontiers of jazz and
making many earlier experiments with music and the spoken
word sound like dilettante dabbling.
Alan
Forrest, The Financial
Times (1978)
Jazz
and poetry have often been combined but rarely as
successfully as this.
Simon Adams,
Jazz Journal
International (2001)
One
can see why the author of
Under the Volcano
might appeal to a composer of Collier’s instincts:
not so much for his hectic intoxication but for his
multi-layered discourse and his ability to dissolve figure
and ground into one headlong stream of
consciousness.
The Penguin
Guide to Jazz on CD (2005)
Not
only captures and expresses a faithfully personal
interpretation of existential conflicts in the Volcano, but
it also evokes the paradoxical din of sad rejoicings in the
Day of the Dead in this, my own Country.
Raul
Ortiz y Ortiz, former Cultural Ambassador for the Mexican
government, and translator of Under the Volcano
into Spanish.
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