Astonishing American Jazz Arranger/Composer George Russell in Events Part 2, more albums of note [1972 Living Time, 1982 Live in an American Time Spiral]

 

Living Time, with ultra-famous jazz pianist Bill Evans, is not quite as amazing as Vertical Forms.  I think if you know and are familiar with Claus Ogerman's collaboration with him called Symbiosis (1974), this definitely suffers in comparison.

Nonetheless it does have some moments of great beauty, but quite a bit of filler, surprisingly.

Living Time, Event VIII begins with solo Evans playing quite complex modern music, when suddenly the whole orchestra jumps in with a chaotic Alban-Bergian mess that sounds almost improvised:

On the other hand the live album Live in an American Time Spiral, in my opinion, has some stunning composition again very effectively melding big band and electric instruments, and very intricate at that. And a wonderful cover pencil drawing to boot (by Roy Smith).

There are only 3 tracks, so they're a bit too long to sample here.  But here's the 10 minute long D.C. Divertimento, which was "composed for the John F. Kennedy Jazz Festival held in Washington D.C., in 1962."  It starts off slowly but really gets into a crazy sound later on, like a bizarre radioactive mutation of a jazz chart:

The stunner on this one though is the 20 minute first track, called Time Spiral.  It has such an original oddness to its melding of electric piano plus acoustic piano, and later abrupt electric chord dissonances with furious percussion welded to the standard horn section, that it really made my jaw drop and everything else too.  Outstandingly appreciated too is the fact every 5 minutes it completely changes directions, rather than just throwing in a bunch of random jazz solos to fill 'er up like an empty gas tank.

Imagine if Miles Davis and Stravinsky had collaborated together to write out a concerto for electric piano / flute / sax...

I'm reminded too of my old favourite unknown work, Don Sebesky's Bela Bartok homage, here, and in some places, this other past Melodiya favorite of mine.

Incidentally, for those curious, the electronic keyboard albums I found, because they're entirely improvised, quite meandering.

source https://progressreview.blogspot.com/2026/08/astonishing-american-jazz_0937435987.html