Culmination

Sam Rivers | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 16, 2000)
• Original Release Date: May 16, 2000
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: RCA
• ASIN: B00002DEVJ
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #315,964 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Inspiration II?, June 14, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Culmination (Audio CD)

From the open notes, this music will seem very familiar to those who have heard INspiration. The difference is the concise nature of the tracks. Many of the tracks here are under ten minutes

The two CDs show Rivers to be an awesome arranger and composer (maybe they won't rob him of a grammy this year-don't hold your breath). Hopefully one day we'll have some recordings available of these compositions the way Rivers intended, with extended lengths of 50+ minutes. UNtil then, lets savor what is available.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic, October 24, 2009

By 

Bill Your 'Free Form FM Handi Cyber Print DJ ... (Mahwah, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Culmination (Audio CD)

Sam Rivers is a gleeming example of how to be a jazzman: take it slow, stay off drugs and booze, get through the 1960s in one piece, do whatever you want, and be paitiant. If Coltrane had this type of balance and lived into the modern era, he would probably be working with George Clinton, Steve Coleman, Defunked, Paul McCartney, any number of people by now; be the first jazzman on the space shuttle.

Rivers was one of those cats only jazz people knew about, and he quietly worked in both avant-gaurde and funk for fifty years: actually, why am I using the past tense--the matero is alive and well, and making albums like Culmination.

This is the companion to Inspiration and covers the same terratory. Technically, this is avant funk, but as usual, genre labals seem to detract from describing this music instead of illumanating.

River's uses a big band here, but a band that grew up with Mahavishneu and Funkadelic, not Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. They use electric basses, funky rythms, and play in time signatures the 1940s, 50s and 60s guys we love probably never even dreamed of. Technically, they are better players.

This is not different DNA, just a different era: these guys have absorbed rock and electric funk, have expendentially better technology, and more educational opportunites. They were born during or after the south intagrated. It is a different jazz because it is a different world.

Funky, thorney, complex, disciplined, and intimadating as hell, this is some of the best jazz of our era, any era. Ascention or Shape Of Things to come seems like nursery school when compared to the rigorus, razor sharp arrangements here. This is avant jazz, but with the most complicated compositions thinkable.

Listen to Blue Note, Listen to Impulse, but than listen to THIS!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars lots of horns, September 5, 2006

By 

Case Quarter (CT USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Culmination (Audio CD)

horns. lots of horns. i like lots of horns. reminds me of a jam session where the best of horn players show up.

the horn ensembles playing rhythmic choruses repeatedly gets to be a bit redundant, but the many solos make the recording. lots of energy.