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| | Herbie Mann : Concerto Grosso in D Blues - Listen, Review and Buy at ARTISTdirect |
 | | Right after the 1968 Berlin Jazz Days festival, Mann, his quintet, co-composer/conductor William Fischer, and a team of 80 Berlin musicians entered Teldec studios to record the huge, ambitious title piece, a concerto that successfully spans the decades from Tchaikovsky to Stockhausen, and from New Orleans to free jazz. |
 | | With some stretches of group improvisation, the piece has structure, memorable yet surprisingly simple motifs, and holds together even when stretched to the limits of coherence by general outbreaks of freeform. |
 | | The best of the lot, the wistful "My Little Ones" (written for Mann's children), contains what is perhaps Mann's most haunting solo on record, at once loving and soaring, backed perfectly by Fischer's economical writing for double string quartet. |
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