A Path Through Haze (Remastered) Attila Zoller & Masahiko Sato

• 1 Meet 09:03
• 2 Sazo 03:57
• 3 Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair 06:30
• 4 Close Up 03:30
• 5 Together, Not Alone 08:51
• 6 A Path Through Haze 13:48
• Total Runtime 45:39

Info for A Path Through Haze (Remastered)

Atilla Zoller was touring Japan with fellow guitar greats Kenny Burrell and Jim Hall when he first played with pianist Masahiko Sato. Zoller exclaimed, “From the first sound on we were completely together, as if we had known each other for years.” Besides his fame as a player, Sato is known for his arranging and composing, having worked on the albums of such stars as Nancy Wilson and Art Farmer. Although often labeled “free jazz”, this album is everything but. Meet is a hard-driving up-tempo quartet adventure. On Sazo Zoller and Sato play off each other in an improvised dance for two. The Appalachian folk song Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair is transformed into a pulsating modernistic piece featuring Sato’s trio. Close Up gets personal with Zoller and Sato again exploring in duo. Together Not Alone is exactly what it says, with the two improvising off the changes of the standard Alone Together. The title piece is the quartet’s majestic modal excursion into the light. With masterful improvisations and an integral familiarity that borders on the extrasensory, this is a musical path well worth taking.

Masahiko Sato Trio
Attila Zoller, guitar
Masahiko Sato, piano
Yasuo Arakawa, bass
Masahiko Ozu, drums

Recorded November 7th, 1971 at the Berlin Jazz Festival 71 at Teldec Studio Berlin
Recorded by Willi Fruth
Engineered by Eberhard Sengpiel
Produced by Joachim E. Berendt

Digitally remastered

Attila Cornelius Zoller (June 13, 1927 – January 25, 1998)
was a Hungarian-born jazz guitarist. He won the Deutscher Filmpreis for "Beste Filmmusik" (best score) in Germany for the film Das Brot der frühen Jahre in 1962.

Born in Visegrád, Hungary, as a child Zoller was taught classical violin by his father, who was a professional violinist. In his teens, he switched to flugelhorn, then bass, and finally guitar. Zoller quit school during the Russian occupation of Hungary following World War II and began playing professionally in Budapest jazz clubs. He escaped Hungary in 1948 just before the permanent Soviet blockade of the country and began his serious music career after he moved to Vienna in 1948. He formed a jazz group with the accordionist and vibraphonist Vera Auer. Zoller left Austria for Germany in 1954, where he played with pianist Jutta Hipp, saxophonist Hans Koller and trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff. Visiting American musicians Oscar Pettiford and Lee Konitz found Zoller's work notable and they urged him to move to the US which he did in 1959, after winning a scholarship to the Lenox School of Jazz. There he studied with Jim Hall and roomed with Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry, whose influence sparked Zoller's interest in free jazz.

Zoller played in drummer Chico Hamilton's group in 1960, with Benny Goodman and flautist Herbie Mann from 1962-1965. In 1965, he began leading a free jazz-influenced group with the pianist Don Friedman, and in 1968 co-led a group with Konitz and Mangelsdorff.

Zoller played and recorded with, among others, Tony Scott, Stan Getz, Red Norvo, Jimmy Raney, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Shirley Scott and Cal Tjader. In addition, his concert and touring activities took him regularly to the European festival circuit, to Japan, and to various US jazz clubs.

Zoller was the founding president of the Vermont Jazz Center (1985) where he also taught music until 1998. In 1995, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the New England Foundation for the Arts for his lifelong musical contribution to jazz. He was also a designer of musical instruments; he patented a bi-directional pickup for guitars in 1971 and helped design his own signature line of guitars with different companies. He died in Townshend, Vermont. A tribute album of his music is in the works and is to be released in 2015 with ENJA Records. The recording will include artists such as Ron Carter, John Abercrombie, Mike Stern, Peter Bernstein, Pat Metheny' Jim Hall, Gene Bertoncini. The album is being produced by David Becker.

This album contains no booklet.