Customer Reviews

Conducts Los Angeles Neophonic Orchestra

5 star:		(5)
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I have been waiting for this album for years. In my college days, I played 2nd trumpet on a program that opened with Fanfare (2nd trumpet plays the opening solo notes) and two other pieces on this CD to an audience including Stan Kenton himself, as a jazz festival judge. Scary. Afterward, many of us bought the album to see how close we came to doing it right. The album was one of the few reasons I kept a turntable. (Kenton's Cuban Fire was another.) The CD does the music more than justice.

I've been waiting for years for this recording to come back into print. It's a beautiful piece by Stan Kenton and some of LA's top studio musicians. Recorded in an orchestral setting, the music strikes a balance between classical formality and some really swinging jazz lines. The best pieces, for me, were the Passacaglia and Fugue and Music for an Unwritten Play. In the Passacaglia, the orchestra adapts Bach's work in a sterling fashion, with improvisational work laying over the top of the familiar theme. In Music for an Unwritten Play the theme is long, majestic, and magical, with some wonderful improvisation work by musicians like Bud. Highly recommended for a change of pace from small group work and the big band swing style. For those who like both classical and jazz.

The neophonic concerts of the mid 1960`s represented the desires of Stan Kenton to present new and creative music with an orchestra specially created to deal with new music. The compositions are very beautiful, moody, almost classical but with space for some of Kentons great soloists, and still retaining the occasional `wall of sound` so famous in Kentons music. His commissioning of good composers needs to be emulated by more groups. This music might seem quite modern in todays world though it was creatived as long ago as the mid 60`s. It is historically important music and a joy to listen to. I would give it six stars.

Neophonic is the ultimate adventure in great new music. It requires total attention and repeat listening to appreciate the depth and greatness of it. Kenton was the ultimate adventurer in new forms of great music, incorporating the best of Jazz and Classical to create a new form, and Neophonic exemplifies this.Great music from a great man who dedicated his life to the grand adventure of music appreciation! Listen to it and it will call you back for more, as it has for me for many years.

This is, really, an unbelievable Stan Kenton album. With music which almost redefines what is acceptable for a large jazz ensemble. Having read no interviews by Mr. Kenton myself, I can only imagine that, on this album, the man was trying to "push the envelope" not only on swing/big band/dance-hall music, but also on the class of music he, himself, was so well known for doing.
And he succeeds! I can compare the material on this album only with the best TV detective-show theme music (that of Mannix comes to mind), or the best TV-show incidental music. Or , maybe, a Stravinski album. Mr. Kenton takes the "big band" and turns it into a source of either profound mystery or, perhaps, shimmering mandala. With the character and quality of music which his band plays here, Stan Kenton, I believe, outdoes everything he has done up to this point in his career.
This is a one-of-a-kind cd. It is, if you will, the kind of big band music you would find in, say, the Twilight Zone...