When Will It Ever End :: A Dreams in Audio Mixtape

Happy Holidays to all my readers!

For some reason the cold weather always gets me in the mood for some nice mellow jazz, so for this year’s Winter mix I decided to stay strictly within that genre. A lot of nice standards on labels like Blue Note, Impulse!, Black Jazz and Strata East with a few smaller labels sprinkled in.

The mix also features one of my all-time favorite jazz tracks, a trilogy entitled “City Triptych: Sandra Is The City, The Black Mayor, Imani (Faith)” by flutist Lloyd McNeil. The track is off his Washington Suite record, the third in his series for his own Asha label which was originally composed for the Capital Ballet Company in Washington, DC. At first glance, the fifteen minute opus may seem like an arduous listen, but it is a true exercise in sonic exploration, with all the ebbs and flows to keep things spontaneous yet cohesive – a true masterpiece in my mind. I didn’t include the entire track on this mix, but you can listen to it in its entirety here.

Tracklisting
01. Dizzy Gillespie – Olinga
from Portrait of Jenny (Perception, 1970)
02. Pete La Roca – Lazy Afternoon
from Basra (Blue Note, 1965)
03. Donald Byrd – Cristo Rendentor
from A New Perspective (Blue Note, 1963)
04. Wayne Shorter – Deluge
from JuJu (Blue Note, 1964)
05. Pharoah Sanders – Astral Traveling
from Thembi (Impulse!, 1971)
06. Clifford Jordan – John Coltrane
from Glass Bead Games (Strata East, 1973)
07. Michel Sardaby – Gail
from Gail (Disques Debs, 1974)
08. Miroslav Vitous – Mood
from Purple (CBS, 1970)
09. Bobby Jackson – Desiree Song
from Desiree Song (Ninth Note, 1978)
10. The Awakening – When Will It Ever End
from Hear, Sense & Feel (Black Jazz, 1972)
11. Alice Coltrane – Stopover Bombay
from Journey in Satchidananda (Impulse!, 1970)
12. Lloyd McNeill Quartet – City Triptych: Sandra Is The City, The Black Mayor, Imani (Faith) [Excerpt]
from Washington Suite (Asha, 1970)

Tagged as: Jazz, Mixes