condition (record/cover): NM / EX- (sticker removal residue)

1974, and the reed player from Bitches Brew and the Mwandishi band makes the record of his life. The Jewel In The Lotus puts Bennie Maupin at the centre of an unusually spacious ensemble - Herbie Hancock on pianos and electronics, Buster Williams on bass, Billy Hart and Frederick Waits on drums and percussion, Charles Sullivan on trumpet - and asks it to play almost nothing. Bass clarinet drifts across held chords, marimba figures surface and disappear, whole passages consist of two instruments and a great deal of silence. Manfred Eicher recorded it in New York and gave it that enormous acoustic. Nothing else on ECM sounds like this.

Original ECM pressing. A cult record for fifty years, and for once the cult is right.