Rolf Kühn

Rolf Kühn and Phil Woods had worked together in New York in the late 1950s, when Kühn was there with Benny Goodman and the Tommy Dorsey orchestra. The Day After, released by MPS in 1972, is their reunion: Woods on alto, Kühn on clarinet, Joachim Kühn on piano, Peter Warren on bass, Oliver Johnson (Steve Lacy's drummer for a decade) on drums, and Naná Vasconcelos on percussion and berimbau.

Five pieces, forty-one minutes. Ca. 1-9-5-2 looks back to the bop era but is played modally. The title track is a trio of the two Kühns and Vasconcelos on berimbau, which the critic Siegfried Schmidt-Joos called a superb example of self-control and spontaneous dialogue. Turning Out is an uptempo feature for the brothers. Everything in the Garden belongs to Woods, whom Kühn describes as showing everything growing in his garden: virtuosity, swing, humour, melodic finesse. The record closes with an eleven-minute Sonata for Percussion, Piano + Clarinet.

This is the freest of Kühn's MPS records, and the one the label files under free jazz. Two years later he made Connection '74 with Randy Brecker, and in 1975 Total Space.

Japanese CD edition from Solid's MPS series.