George Russell (featuring Bill Evans) - Jazz In The Space Age

8.5 - USA - 1960

George Russell is arguably one of the most underrated figures in jazz history. Sure, he is a fairly well-regarded composer and theorist – considered the first jazz musician to make a substantial contribution to music theory – but despite the fact that he literally wrote the book on it (while laid up in hospital), he doesn’t seem to get enough credit for inventing modal jazz. His book – The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization – became a big influence on Miles Davis’s Kind Of Blue. Indeed, he would repeat the trick a couple of decades later when he went to Scandinavia and invented jazz fusion a couple of years before Davis’s Bitches Brew, but that’s a subject for a review of Electronic Sonata For Souls Loved By Nature...

In any event, Russell’s Lydianism is on fine display in this 1960 set. Three versions of “Chromatic Universe” set the stage for the proceedings with some excellent double-piano work by the twin-headed monster of Bill Evans and Paul Bley. The extended “The Lydiot” features a tremendous solo by Evans, but it’s the orchestrated horn section that really raises the track to another level. Two other tracks on the album – “Dimensions” and “Waltz From Outer Space” are from a different session, recorded a month later than the rest of the record, and are a bit more traditional sounding, the latter track being the least interesting on the album.

The 2011 CD reissue by American Jazz Classics also includes a 1960 live set recorded in Massachusetts. The sound quality is decent (not quite as bad as the liner notes would suggest) and the musicianship is fine – although it is different group than that featured on the album proper. But the lack of Bill Evans is quite evident. Still, there’s worse ways to fill out a disc.