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Best of 2026

The Contemporary Jazz Quartet

Predetermination (LP)

Label: Formalibera

Format: LP

Genre: Jazz

In stock

€22.60
VAT exempt
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* Edition of 300 copies. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a four-page printed insert. The Contemporaray Jazz Quartet together with Gary Peacock and Sunny Murray! This is THE sunken treasure. This is music I have only heard about. And yet, here it is. Unbelievable. Intact. Preserved. Beaming of energy and JOY! This is a sensational find. My favorite Danes exploding together with my favorite double bass player all time. Gary Peacock. The engine. The power engine. I can hardly breathe when he plays, and when he starts soloing and creating beautiful duo bass action with his colleague Steffen Andersen in this very first recording of 'Predetermination,' 10 minutes in -- my heart expands, and the world suddenly looks and sounds entirely different. Add Sunny Murray on top of it all? The master of unreal flow and accents. Sunny was a beast to deal with at the time. But what he adds to the music is pure poetry. No other drummer did anything even close to this back in the mid-'60s. To have Steinmetz and Beckerlee playing alongside Peacock and Murray in 1964 is as good as it gets. The absolute point-zero of free jazz, Spiritual Unity, was just released.

It changed everything. This is the mother of it all. The birth. You would think Steinmetz and Beckerlee would have had a little anxiety joining the American duo. There is nothing of uncertainty or vague playing here. This is for real. Right-on-take-no-prisoners-do-not-look-back. Added to the A-side of this mythical recording with creative Danes and the rhythm section of Spiritual Unity is a little improvised miniature. 'In the Name of Beauty.' The title very accurately describes what is going on. TCJQ creating pure communal beauty. Steinmetz, Beckerlee and Andersen getting very real! Dig the harmonics of the last note. The B-side´s 'Spontaneity,' 'Action' and 'Collusion' are just wild. Raw. And utterly beautiful. The group is doing real sharing on a level unheard of before. While listening through this music numerous times and trying to write something simultaneously of intellectual or emotional content something happens? I lose the sense of time. The emerging free jazz scene of Denmark of the early '60s, is something spectacular and WILD. Years before the other Scandinavian countries even got a grip of the new jazz, the Danes were doing it already. Fueled by very important guest visits by Cecil Taylor, Sunny Murray and Albert Ayler at both clubs and radio or TV appearances. Those were the times when public service actually noticed new developments in art, music and literature." Mats Gustafsson

Details
Cat. number: No. 7FFTCJQ190
Year: 2026
Notes: