Imaginary Voyage

Jean-Luc Ponty | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 25, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Atlantic
• ASIN: B000002I93
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #19,135 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. New Country

2. The Gardens of Babylon

3. Wandering on the Milky Way

4. Once Upon a Dream

5. Tarantula

6. Part I

7. Part II

8. Part III

9. Part IV

Editorial Reviews

No Description Available
No Track Information Available
Media Type: CD
Artist: PONTY,JEAN-LUC
Title: IMAGINARY VOYAGE
Street Release Date: 11/17/1987
Domestic
Genre: JAZZ

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Musical Dreamscape, September 23, 2001

By 

Kurt Harding "bon vivant" (Boerne TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Imaginary Voyage (Audio CD)

Jean-Luc Ponty presented the jazz world with three fabulous albums in the 1970s, and Imaginary Voyage is one of them. I hadn't heard this in years and what a treat it is indeed to hear it again.
The entire album is a tour-de-force. New Country is so good, Ponty's play puts most of Nashville to shame. My favorite cut is the aptly named Once Upon A Dream, a mesmerizing tune with a great deal of background musical tension that can induce a dream-like trance.
The title cut starts out part Yes, part Return to Forever and gives way to the mystical wanderings of Ponty's violin and organ before winding up with an inspired dose of harder-edged guitar driven jazz-fusion.
The only drawbacks to this CD are its relative brevity (under 40 minutes) and the almost non-existent liner notes. Otherwise, I recommend this musical dreamscape to any Ponty fan who has not yet heard it and to the musically adventurous who have not yet heard him.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Let this be the first!, August 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Imaginary Voyage (Audio CD)

If you are a considering buying a Luc Ponty CD and you're not sure where to begin....well the answer is, Imaginary Voyage. I own most of his music and this one stands out as being the most musical and beautiful compostion. (I might add that Egnimatic Ocean is another gem). Listen on all you progressive Jazz lovers :)

Gene

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great album of jazz rock with proggy overtones, July 19, 2006

By 

Jeffrey J.Park (Massachusetts, USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Imaginary Voyage (Audio CD)

This 1976 album opens with the track New Country, which has somewhat of a country hoedown feel to it - complete with a "foot-stomping" bass drum/bass guitar pattern and the lightning fast picking of the acoustic guitar and Jean Luc Ponty's "country music on speed" fiddling style. An odd way to open this otherwise proggy jazz rock album perhaps, but the track is pretty neat. The rest of the album however, is really fantastic and blends elements of jazz with rock, along with an admixture of prog rock and a tiny pinch of psychedelic rock too (the spacey and heavily echoed/phased violin solo instrumental "Wandering on the Milky Way" is a good example of this). As a huge prog fan and a casual jazz rock fan I found the blend to be very listenable and extremely enjoyable.

The musicians on this album include virtuoso violinist and band leader Jean Luc Ponty (he played on Frank Zappa's Hot Rats album (1969) and a few mid-70s Mahavishnu Orchestra albums), bassist Tom Fowler (he played on Frank Zappa's One Size Fits All album (1975)), solid studio musician Daryl Stuermer on guitars, Billy Cobham inspired drummer Mark Craney, and keyboardist Allan Zavod (mini-moog, string synthesizer, acoustic piano). I should note that Jean Luc also played Hammond organ and synthesizers too. Come to think of it, synthesizers are featured pretty heavily on this album. All of the musicians are fantastic and although I generally like Daryl's approach and playing, he sometimes "overplays" on the electric guitar (he also did this with Genesis during their live shows). It is not distracting mind you; I just do not feel that his "fast" playing has the same organic feel that virtuoso guitarists John McLaughlin or Alan Holdsworth got when they were burning up and down the fretboard.

The griping aside, the music on this album is just fantastic. It is a perfect blend of jazz rock and prog with enough dynamic contrast, melodic development, and above all else, unchecked virtuosity to keep any proghead thoroughly entertained. My favorite piece of course is the 19'55" multi-movement "Imaginary Voyage" suite. This really is a great track that covers a range of moods and features some excellent playing by all of the band members along with extremely intricate ensemble work - I won't bother going into the numbers of meter shifts per measure but there are a lot.

All in all this is a great album of jazz-rock with an admixture of proggy elements that features the violin as a solo instrument and would make a fine addition to the jazz rock or prog rock album collection. Highly recommended along with the excellent follow-up album Enigmatic Ocean (1977) and other jazz rock albums such as Romantic Warrior (Return to Forever, 1976), Birds of Fire (Mahavishnu Orchestra, 1973), and Cross Collateral (Passport, 1975).