Don Cherry

Featuring: Pharoah Sanders

Biggest Tip! 180 gram Vinyl Edition. Recorded in 1966 and released by Blue Note Records in August of 1967, Don Cherry's Symphony for Improvisers features Gato Barbieri, Henry Grimes, and Ed Blackwell, all of whom had appeared on Cherry's previous album Complete Communion. Also featured are Karl Berger, Jean-François Jenny- Clark, and Pharoah Sanders. The abum received a rating of ***** on AlMusic, with reviewer Steve Huey string that, "Even though the album is full of passionate fireworks, there's also a great deal of subtlety. Feverish but well-channeled, this larger-group session is probably Cherry's most gratifying for Blue Note."

Ollie Bivens, writing for All About Jazz, commented: "Symphony for Improvisers is a lesson in controlled chaos that remains eminently musical... This music is cerebral without being cold, freewheeling without degenerating into a lot of blowing for the sake of blowing. Never boring, Symphony for Improvisers is for jazz fans with lengthy attention spans and open ears."

Ekkehard Jost wrote that Symphony for Improvisers and its predecessor Complete Communion are "among the most important LPs Don Cherry made, if not among the most important in free jazz of the Sixties."[9] According to Jost, the central idea is that "monothematic pieces are dropped and several thematic complexes are integrated into a suite whose 'movements,' while clearly identifiable thanks to their contrasted thematic material, are linked with one another."Jost noted that, in relation to Complete Communion, Symphony for Improvisers "is more open in form, despite an almost identical construction. Transitions between the thematic sections are frequently fluid, as are the boundaries between composed material and improvisations. A great deal more time is spent on improvisations, as opposed to the themes, which become more and more fragmentary."