RESONANCE co-president Zev Feldman with a copy of “Eric Dolphy: Musical Prophet.”
John Malveaux of
forwards this:
The Los Angeles Times
The story of “Eric Dolphy: Musical Prophet” begins in a suitcase.
It’s
1964, and the Los Angeles born jazz multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy,
then living in New York and at the peak of his alto-sax-blowing powers,
is headed overseas.
Known
for his work as a bandleader and with Charles Mingus, John Coltrane,
Booker Little and others, Dolphy is embarking on a European tour and has
entrusted his effects, including a case full of important stuff, to a
friend for safekeeping. Not long after, Dolphy, a diabetic, dies
suddenly during the tour in Berlin.
After
sanctioned handoffs, the suitcase lands with composer and flutist James
Newton and, over a half-century later, recordings within it are loaded
onto a reel-to-reel player in the Beverly Hills studios of Resonance
Records.
Variations
of this story occur on a regular basis at Resonance, a West Adams-based
imprint that just celebrated its 10th anniversary. Founded by jazz
producer, former studio owner and philanthropist George Klabin, who was
eager to invest in what he describes as “a virtual museum” to his
lifelong passion, the label will release the Dolphy triple-CD set and
digital download package “Musical Prophet” on Friday.
It’s
the first unreleased Dolphy recordings to arrive in decades and follows
a November vinyl release put out in conjunction with Record Store Day, a
marketing promotion designed to spur purchases at independent
retailers. Subtitled “The Expanded New York Studio Sessions,” the
collection features nearly 85 minutes of previously unreleased
recordings as well as the otherwise unavailable monaural tapes of
seminal Dolphy albums “Conversations” and “Iron Man.”
Those
who follow Resonance have come to expect nothing less, and 2018 was a
good year for the Grammy-winning label. It issued two searing live
recordings by jazzfunk guitarist Grant Green and a previously unreleased
set by jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery. On the contemporary front, its
Klabin-produced recent studio album by jazz clarinetist Eddie Daniels is
nominated for a Grammy in the Latin jazz album category.
Since
its birth as a division of Klabin’s nonprofit, the Rising Jazz Stars
Foundation, Resonance has earned attention for old and new records from
bassist Jaco Pastorius, trumpet-and-drum team Thad Jones and Mel Lewis,
pianist Bill Evans, British jazz singer Polly Gibbons, bossa nova
collaborators João Gilberto and Stan Getz and others. For the live
album, “Wes Montgomery in Paris,” Resonance teamed with France’s
National Audio-Visual Institute to issue an estate-sanctioned version of
a crucial and oft-bootlegged Montgomery recording.
The
label’s mission is straightforward, Klabin said, and has arisen out of
necessity. “There’s really no place where you can hear really great
mainstream jazz of the nature we do on a consistent basis.”
Describing
his team as “curators of really great music — we choose very
carefully,” Klabin stressed that in addition to searching for lost
recordings, Resonance is equally devoted to finding “true virtuosos of
mainstream jazz.”
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