AVID Jazz continues with its Four Classic Album series with a re-mastered 2CD release from George Russell, complete with original artwork, liner notes and personnel details
“Jazz In The Space Age”; “George Russell Sextet In K.C.”; “Stratusphunk’” and “The Stratus Seekers”
If you like your jazz a little more challenging, please welcome George Russell to the AVID jazz catalogue. Russell was a pianist, composer, arranger and music theorist whose most famous contribution to jazz was his theory of Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organisation. We are not even going to attempt to explain what that is! We think you would need a degree in music to understand most of the language of jazz theory! We like to listen to jazz music here at AVID, not theorise about. Instead we will point you towards our selection of Russell classics and to other artists who have come under the influence of George Russell and let you make up your own minds. The most famous album influenced by this theory is perhaps fittingly, one of the most brilliant, coolest and best selling jazz albums of all time, Miles Davis’s Kind Of Blue. Other Russell followers, some of whom you will discover on our four selections, are John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Bill Evans, Paul Bley, Steve Swallow, Hal McKusick and Paul Motian.
CD1
1-6: ‘Jazz In The Space Age’
1. Chromatic Universe-Part 1
2. Dimensions
3. Chromatic Universe- Part 2
4. The Lydiot
5. Waltz From Outer Space
6. Chromatic Universe- Part 3
7-12: ‘George Russell Sextet in K.C’
7. War Gewessen
8. Rhymes
9. Lunacy
10. Sandu
11. Tune Up
12. Theme
CD2
1-6: ‘Stratusphunk’
1. Stratusphunk
2. New Donna
3. Bent Eagle
4. Kentucky Oysters
5. Lambskins
6. Things New
7-12: ‘The Stratus Seekers’
7. Pan-Daddy
8 The Stratus Seekers
9. Kige’s Tune
10. Blues In Orbit
11. A Lonely Place
12. Stereophrenic
