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EN
“Untold riches await”: Strata-East reissues reviewed
['Daniel Spicer']
The Wire: Home
Strata-East’s first releases were by Tolliver’s Music Inc, a quartet featuring Cowell plus bassist Cecil McBee and drummer Jimmy Hopps.
Cowell’s “Orientale” is 17 minutes of glowering exoticism in the tradition of John Coltrane’s “Olé”, with a McCoy Tyner-esque extended opening piano solo.
While Music Inc display an unwavering devotion to jazz as essential artform, Cowell’s 1974 solo piano album Musa: Ancestral Streams pushes in less familiar directions.
In contrast to Keith Jarrett’s contemporaneous albums of sprawling, improvised solo piano, Cowell presents a tightly drawn suite of pristine compositions.
If this is a hint of some of the albums yet to be reissued, untold riches await.
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