Walldorf Studio, near Frankfurt, 1 and 2 May 1975. Albert Mangelsdorff on trombone, Palle Danielsson on bass, Elvin Jones on drums. Seven pieces, thirty-nine minutes, released by MPS the same year.
Mangelsdorff had recorded with Jones once before, on the 1968 duet album Albert Mangelsdorff and His Friends. The Wide Point is the first of his trombone-bass-drums trio records, the format that would produce Trilogue with Pastorius and Mouzon the following year and the Montreux album in 1980. The band could not be more different from those: Danielsson, from the Jarrett and Garbarek quartets, plays acoustic, and Jones brings the Coltrane pulse.
What Mangelsdorff does over them is the multiphonic trombone he had been developing since Trombirds: chords built by singing one note and playing another, so a single horn can carry harmony as well as line. Against Jones's polyrhythm it produces a trio record with no gaps. MPS collected it in 2008 in Mangelsdorff Originals Vol. 2, next to Solo Now and the Mumps album with John Surman. Engineered by Torsten Wintermeier.
Japanese CD edition from Solid's MPS series.
