Alexander von Schlippenbach

The Berlin Jazz Festival commissioned it. Alexander von Schlippenbach, twenty-eight, combined Gunter Hampel's quartet, Manfred Schoof's quintet and Peter Brötzmann's trio into one orchestra and premiered Globe Unity at the Philharmonie on 3 November 1966. In December they went into the SABA studio and recorded it, and the record came out in 1967. Fourteen players: Schlippenbach on piano, Karl Berger on vibes, Claude Deron and Manfred Schoof on trumpets, Albert Mangelsdorff on trombone, Gunter Hampel on bass clarinet and flute, Peter Brötzmann, Gerd Dudek, Kris Wanders and Willem Breuker on reeds, Buschi Niebergall and Peter Kowald on basses, Jaki Liebezeit and Mani Neumeier on drums.

Two pieces, Globe Unity and Sun. This is the year Schlippenbach said "we don't call it New Thing, but Own Thing", the phrase the scholarship uses to mark the point where European free jazz stopped following New York. Brötzmann's For Adolphe Sax was recorded the following spring. Liebezeit would leave to form Can in 1968; Neumeier to form Guru Guru.

The Globe Unity Orchestra is still playing, with Schlippenbach still at the piano, and Intakt marked fifty years in 2018. This is the first record, and the one where it sounds most like a big band that has just discovered it does not have to be one.

Japanese CD edition from Solid's MPS series.