Gil Evans

Gil Evans: There Comes A Time (RCA)

With the flood of mindless formula jazz-funk LP's pouring unabated from the accounting offices of the major record corporations, a new album by the genius arranger/keyboardist Gil Evans is more than just a bit of dry land in a storm - it's more like a flash of paradise itself. Fusion to Gil is a matter of integrating rock elements into an intelligent, vibrant compositional and improvisational context, using electronics and repitition without throwing away the scope and surprise of the jazz idiom. His Svengali album for Atlantic Records a couple years ago still stands as a modern classic of the genre, and his first LP for RCA, a series of treatments of Jimi Hendrix compositions for jazz orchestra, took his approach one step beyond into uncharted territory, building on Jimi's work to create some incredibly magnificent moments of modern music.

Now RCA has awarded our patience with Gil's latest masterpiece, a relentlessly exciting album titled There Comes a Time (after the Tony Williams composition of the same name which receives a 16-minute treatment here). Spotlighting soloists Dave Sanborn (alto), George Adams and Billy Harper (tenors), Ryo Kawasaki (guitar - heard here recently with Elvin Jones), Hannibal Marvin Peterson (trumpet), and Evans' electric piano, Gil's big band brings its four saxophones, three trumpets, three French horns, three tubas, four percussionists, electric bass, organ, piano and synthesizer to bear on Hendrix's "Little Wing" (vocal by Hannibal), Jelly Roll Morton's "King Porter Stomp," Bobby Troup's "The Meaning of the Blues," Hannibal's flaming "Children of the Fire," the long Tony Williams work, and two delightful Gil Evans compositions, "Makes Her Move" and "Anita's Dance" (named for his wife, who co-produced the session with Gil).

There is so much moving, imaginative music packed into the grooves of this record that you’ll be blown away, amazed, educated, enlightened, ecstatic, all at once, and for a long time to come. Of course RCA has already decided that the record has "no commercial potential” - it took me two months to get them to send over a copy for review - so you won't be hearing anything else about it in the press or on the radio, but if you read this humble note, please don't hesitate to take Gil Evans and his orchestra into your own home. They’ll be welcome guests, I assure you.

- John Sinclair