Memorable music expands

One last music post this morning...before I move on to other things for the afternoon.

First up, a great solo by Eric Dolphy:



Hilarious how Dolphy just sits there as the drummer goes through a pretty good solo at the beginning. Then, as if he suddenly woke up, Eric Dolphy gets up and launches into an amazing solo on the clarinet.

Update: I just noticed that in a past post with videos featuring Mingus, I had linked to another video from the same performance as above. Both are excerpted from a performance by the Mingus Sextet in Oslo in 1964. A 1-hour video of that performance can be seen here through Google Video. Also through Google Video, a Eric Dolphy's performance of his composition Strength with Unity, from the Once Festival on 1 March 1964. (Amazing! The internet is a treasure-chest of such wonders!)

Also, to listen to some more great live playing by the Mingus Sextet, get the album featuring their performance at Cornell before going on the European tour. The album was released last summer by Bluenote and has been hailed as a "certifiable gem" and the "jazz find of the year" - almost on par with the great Coltrane-Thelonius Monk At Carnegie Hall recording from 1957 that was found in 2005 and on being released on Bluenote lived up to all the pre-release hype (Newsweek apparently refered to it as the “musical equivalent of the discovery of a new Mount Everest.”)

Also, just read that Dolphy, who decided to stay back in Europe after this tour of Europe with the Mingus Sextet, sadly died in a diabetic comatose in Berlin two months after the Mingus Sextet's tour ended. He was only 36. And apropos of that finding, I'm going to post 2 more videos (in keeping with my habit of posting 3 videos in Music tagged posts) featuring the very talented Eric Dolphy.

First, a performance from 1961 in Berlin playing solo a piece called "God Bless the Child"



and then a delectable little piece with Dolphy playing the flute!



Note: The title is from something Dolphy himself said in a short interview in Amsterdam, after the performonce there with the Mingus Sextet. It appears to be an interview which has been transcribed poorly into English; here's a much better interview, if you are interested.)