Jimmy Giuffre

Liquid Dancers is the third and last album by The Jimmy Giuffre 4 for Soul Note, the semi-electric quartet the clarinettist and saxophonist led through the 1980s after Dragonfly and Quasar. Recorded in Connecticut in April 1989 and released in 1991, it is a set of nine short pieces, none longer than six and a half minutes, in which keyboards and electric bass carry Giuffre's interest in low registers and quiet counterpoint into a fusion-era sound. Reviewing it for Jazz Journal in November 1991, Mark Gilbert called it an "excellent and highly recommended date".

The quartet recorded at RBY Recording Studios in Southbury, Connecticut, on April 24, 1989, with Jack Jones as engineer and Giovanni Bonandrini as producer. Jimmy Giuffre plays tenor and soprano saxophones, clarinet and bass flute, Pete Levin keyboards, Bob Nieske electric bass and Randy Kaye drums, the same line-up, and the same studio, as Quasar, taped there in May 1985. In between Giuffre had also worked in duo with the French reedman André Jaume, recorded live in Paris in 1987 and at Willisau in 1988. Gilbert counted six pieces by Giuffre and one each by Juanita Giuffre, Levin and Nieske, and heard "an abiding impression of brooding suspense". Most themes, he wrote, move through two-voice counterpoint between Nieske's bass and Giuffre's horn, "often subtly shadowed by Levin's synth", while Kaye's drumming gives colour as much as pulse. He singled out the title track and I Would for their motivic development, and noted passages of four-to-the-bar swing where Giuffre's tenor, light and indebted to Lester Young, links the leader of the 1950s to this band. Subway is the longest piece. Juanita Odjenar Giuffre also painted the cover, and Philippe Carles wrote the liner notes in French and English.

Soul Note CD 121158-2, the original 1991 release, mastered at PhonoComp in Tribiano near Milan.