| Reflections can be seen as a companion to “Strings Revisited” (TUM CD 003), which featured a trio comprised of Juhani Aaltonen exclusively on tenor saxophone, Reggie Workman on bass and Andrew Cyrille on drums together with The Avanti! Chamber Orchestra conducted by Henrik Otto Donner. While “Strings Revisited” had a chamber orchestra playing fully notated music virtually all the time and, therefore, restricted Aaltonen, Workman and Cyrille into improvising within the space provided by the arrangements, the music on this recording is improvised within only a loose compositional framework that leaves much freedom to the musicians. Composed themes are used only as a starting point and, with the exception of Andrew Cyrille’s composition “The Navigator”, there are no pre-conceived arrangements. The recording features three giants of improvised music in an open dialogue built on both their shared influences and their different backgrounds.
Reflections was recorded at Finnvox in Helsinki, Finland, on November 23, 2002 (tracks 1-6) with Dan Tigerstedt as the recording engineer, and at the Chamber Music Hall of the Finlandia House in Helsinki, Finland, on November 22, 2002 (track 7) by Esa Santonen. The recording was mixed by Henrik Otto Donner and Esa Santonen at DER in Tammisaari, Finland. |