Surman On the Mount

Let's start to wind down August with the 74th birthday of one of my favorite sax cats.

If you know me you know I have a serious British Jazz fetish, and today's birthday lad is a huge part of that scene for lo! these last five decades.

I was adding up his session discography, and he's led or played on somewhere around 100 records. He plays in an uninteresting, derivatively cliché manner on precisely none of them.

To celebrate his big day I've got this tremendous concert of my favorite of his many groups and projects, an early 1970s trio with Stu Martin and Barre Phillips imaginatively titled The Trio.

If I had to describe the music in this show, I'd say that it contains the entire history of Jazz -- often all at once -- in two hours of event.

The Trio

Jazzhaus

Hamburg, Germany

1.30.1970

01 Foyer Hall/Silvercloud

02 Joachim/In Between + Caractacus

03 Tallness/Dee Tune

04 Porte de Lilas/6's and 7's/Spikenard

Total time: 1:52:40

disc break goes after Track 02

John Surman - baritone & soprano saxophones, bass clarinet

Barre Phillips - bass

Stu Martin - drums

Jazzrita/Tom Phillips remaster of an unidentified FM master capture

713 MB FLAC/August 2018 archive link

This one was worked on and optimized by two stalwart audio remastery masters, so you know it's indistinguishable from a real release.

I'll be back soon, you know I will. I may even do another weirdo post tomorrow, not sure yet. But John Surman was born this day in 1944 and today's all about him, so enjoy this burner of a concert from 48 years ago if you wanna hear him and his mates blow the roof clean off the Jazzhaus using only their instruments.--J.