Name: Western Suite
Brand: Jimmy Giuffre

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

MOVLP2789

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Colour

black

Colour details

Discogs ID

Discs

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

180 Gram Vinyl.

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Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2021-01-08

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Little Amber Fish

Tax rate GB

UPC / Barcode

8719262016811

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1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / black

Artist

Jimmy Giuffre

Genre GB

Jazz

Label GB

Music On Vinyl

In late 1957, jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, composer, and iconoclast Jimmy Giuffre broke up the original Jimmy Giuffre 3 with Ralph Pena and Jim Hall. In early 1958, for a recording session, he formed a new trio without a rhythm section. For the album <i>Trav'lin' Light</i>, his new trio included Hall on guitar and the underrated trombone giant Bob Brookmeyer. For a year, they gigged together up and down the West Coast and played summer festivals, recorded, and even played clubs in New York. They became a trio of adventurous musicians for whom form was not an obstacle to creativity. 

As the year wound down, Giuffre wanted to document the trio once more, sensing its life was coming to an end. He composed the four-movement <i>Western Suite</i> with the trio's strengths in mind, as a way of documenting how they had come together as a band during that year. The piece itself stands as a crowning achievement in a career that included discovering the talents of Steve Swallow and Paul Bley and making the truly revolutionary recording "Free Fall" for Columbia three years later. The roots of that thinking lie in this set. 

Jim Hall's playing was dark, funky, ambiguous, sounding like drums and voices all at the same time -- particularly in the fourth movement. Brookmeyer became the pace setter. His lines were played as stage settings for the other two players to dialogue and narrate against. Giuffre, ever the storyteller, advanced the improvisation angle and wrote his score so that each player had to stand on his own as part of the group; there were no comfort zones. Without a rhythm section, notions of interval, extensions, interludes, and so on were out the window. He himself played some of his most restrained yet adventurous solos in the confines of this trio and within the form of this suite. It swung like West Coast jazz, but felt as ambitious as Copland's "Billy The Kid".

Western Suite

Music GB