Handscapes 2 (Remastered) The Piano Choir

• 1 Ballad for the Beast from Bali-Bali 07:08
• 2 The Need to Smile 06:31
• 3 Barbara Ann 04:52
• 4 In What Direction Are You Headed 06:20
• 5 Prayer for Peace 08:49
• Total Runtime 33:40

Info zu Handscapes 2 (Remastered)

Second album by The Piano Choir, a group of many pianists active on the American avant-jazz scene, released in 1975. Ron Burton replaced Danny Mixon on the first album, Handscapes, and was joined by Stanley Cowell, Nat Jones, Hugh Lawson, Webster Lewis, Harold Mabern and Sonelius Smith. The band is made up of seven members. This is a masterpiece of space-age-like crossover jazz that is quite different from the images of Strata East label, featuring synthesisers as well as acoustic piano in a big way, and incorporating retro-futuristic sounds. The refreshingly cool Cowell-composed B1 at the end of the album is exceptional.

As you might guess from the title, the group's an all-piano ensemble – one that features hip talents that include Harold Mabern, Sonelius Smith, Stanley Cowell, Nat Jones, Hugh Lawson, and Webster Lewis – coming together in ways that have the pianos handling every part of the music – rhythm, melody, and all these great little bits around the edges – all on these long, stretched-out tracks that have lots of room for solo contributions too!

At the time of release Ebony reviewer Phyl Garland said "One needn't be a "piano freak" to appreciate a truly new recording. First of all imagine seven gifted and talented pianists sitting down to seven grand pianos and proceeding to tear up these instruments - musically, that is.... The torrrent of sound springing from their 70 fingers is so powerful and majestic as to be unlike anything one has ever heard."

Stanley Cowell, Sonelius Smith, Ron Burton, Nat Jones, Hugh Lawson, Webster Lewis, Harold Mabern, Mtume, Jimmy Hopps, John Lewis,
Digitally remastered

Stanley Cowell
(born May 5, 1941) is an American jazz pianist and co-founder of the Strata-East Records label. He played with Roland Kirk while studying at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and later with Marion Brown, Max Roach, Bobby Hutcherson, Clifford Jordan, Harold Land, Sonny Rollins and Stan Getz. Cowell played with trumpeter Charles Moore and others in the Detroit Artist's Workshop Jazz Ensemble in 1965-66. During the late 1980s Cowell was part of a regular quartet led by J.J. Johnson. Cowell teaches in the Music Department of the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

Dieses Album enthält kein Booklet