torsten
i never thought it possible ever again being impressed, shaken, thrown down to earth, lifted up into at least the third of heaven before i came across this album of don cherry today: glory be to jah, om shanti om, om mani padme hum, hare krishna, bismillahir rahmanir rahim ... here within music transcends itself into transcen_dance ... the cosmic play lila ... or one might say: dance: the dance of shiva nataraj ... to the supreme truth: tat tvam asi - you're it.
Sapphista
Yes. Lovely. Beautiful noise. Running makeup like winetears. Listening to this with rioja while the apocalypse comes and goes.
Favorite track: Summer House Sessions Side B.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
$8.90USD or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Due to unprecedented delays in global production, we are anticipating a November 15th release date for two upcoming LPs, Don Cherry’s The Summer House Sessions and Don Cherry’s New Researches featuring Naná Vasconcelos’s Organic Music Theatre – Festival de jazz de Chateauvallon 1972. CD and digital editions have not been impacted.
LP on black vinyl, pressed at RTI and housed in a heavy-duty tip-on Stoughton jacket, with insert.
Includes unlimited streaming of The Summer House Sessions
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 7 days
Purchasable with gift card
$25USDor more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
2xCD set in jewel case, with slipcase and OBI strip.
Includes bonus rehearsal material from The Summer House Sessions, absent from the vinyl edition.
Includes unlimited streaming of The Summer House Sessions
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
In 1968, Don Cherry had already established himself as one of the leading voices of the avant-garde. Having pioneered free jazz as a member of Ornette Coleman’s classic quartet, and with a high profile collaboration with John Coltrane under his belt, the globetrotting jazz trumpeter settled in Sweden with his partner Moki and her daughter Neneh. There, he assembled a group of Swedish musicians and led a series of weekly workshops at the ABF, or Workers’ Educational Association, from February to April of 1968, with lessons on extended forms of improvisation including breathing, drones, Turkish rhythms, overtones, silence, natural voices, and Indian scales. That summer, saxophonist and recording engineer Göran Freese—who later recorded Don’s classic Organic Music Society and Eternal Now LPs—invited Don, members of his two working bands, and a Turkish drummer to his summer house in Kummelnäs, just outside of Stockholm, for a series of rehearsals and jam sessions that put the prior months’ workshops into practice. Long relegated to the status of a mysterious footnote in Don’s sessionography, tapes from this session, as well as one professionally mixed tape intended for release, were recently found in the vaults of the Swedish Jazz Archive, and the lost Summer House Sessions are finally available over fifty years after they were recorded.
On July 20, the musicians gathered at Freese’s summer house included Bernt Rosengren (tenor saxophone, flutes, clarinet), Tommy Koverhult (tenor saxophone, flutes), Leif Wennerström (drums), and Torbjörn Hultcrantz (bass) from Don’s Swedish group; Jacques Thollot (drums) and Kent Carter (bass) from his newly formed international band New York Total Music Company; Bülent Ateş (hand drum, drums), who was visiting from Turkey; and Don (pocket trumpet, flutes, percussion) himself. Lacking a common language, the players used music as their common means of communication. In this way, these frenetic and freewheeling sessions anticipate Don’s turn to more explicitly pan-ethnic expression, preceding his epochal Eternal Rhythm dates by four months. The octet, comprising musicians from America, France, Sweden, and Turkey, was a perfect vehicle for Don’s budding pursuit of “collage music,” a concept inspired in part by the shortwave radio on which Don listened to sounds from around the world. Using the collage metaphor, Don eliminated solos and the introduction of tunes, transforming a wealth of melodies, sounds, and rhythms into poetic suites of different moods and changing forms. The Summer House Sessions ensemble joyously layers manifold cultural idioms, traversing the airy peaks and serene valleys of Cherry’s earthly vision.
In the Swedish Jazz Archive quite a few other recordings from the same day were to be found. Some of the highlights are heard as bonus material on the CD edition of this album. The octet is augmented by producer and saxophone player Gunnar Lindqvist, who led the Swedish free jazz orchestra G.L. Unit on the album Orangutang, and drummer Sune Spångberg, who recorded with Albert Ayler in 1962. The bonus CD also includes a track without Cherry featuring Jacques Thollot joined by five Swedes including Lindqvist, Tommy Koverhult, Sune Spångberg, and others.
With liner notes by Magnus Nygren and album art featuring a cover painting by Moki Cherry: Untitled, ca. 1967–68.
credits
released June 18, 2021
Recorded July 20, 1968 at Kummelnäs, Sweden by Göran Freese
Audio restoration by Robbie Lee
Mastering for vinyl by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin
Cover painting by Moki Cherry: Untitled, ca. 1967-68
Design by Alec Mapes-Frances
Thanks to: Magnus Nygren, Naima Karlsson, Roger Bergner and the Centre for Swedish Folk Music and Jazz Research in Stockholm, Anna Freese & Lisa Freese, David Grubbs, Caroline de Bendern, Åsa Engel, and Bengt Rosengren
Blank Forms is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting emerging and underrepresented artists working in a range of
time-based and interdisciplinary art practices, including experimental music, performance, dance, and sound art. Blank Forms provides artists with curatorial support, residencies, commissions, and publications to help document, disseminate, and advance their practices....more
