John Tchicai

Timo's Message is a small-group session led by John Tchicai, taped on 7 February 1984 at Chez Jeanette in Aarau, Switzerland, and issued by Black Saint three years later. Tchicai, born in Copenhagen in 1936 to a Danish mother and a Congolese father, moved to New York in 1963 and played in the New York Contemporary Five with Archie Shepp and Bill Dixon, then in the New York Art Quartet with Roswell Rudd and Milford Graves. He went back to Denmark in 1966. In the early 1980s he took up the tenor saxophone, which then replaced the alto as his main instrument, according to the Lewis Porter encyclopedia entry on jazz.com.

Discogs credits Tchicai on tenor and alto saxophone, while the CAM Jazz credits give tenor saxophone and bass clarinet. Timo Fleig, whose first name is in the title, plays drums and percussion and made the cover artwork with Judith Oxlund. The contrabass is credited to Thomas Dürst and Christian Kuntner. Giovanni Bonandrini produced, Daniel Meyer engineered the recording and Peter Niklas Wilson wrote the liner notes. The nine pieces are short, none much over seven minutes, and seven of them are Tchicai's. The opener, Frisk Baglaens, is by Marilyn Mazur, and Stella By Starlight, by Victor Young and Ned Washington, is the one standard. Mushi Miyake is the longest track, while Homage A Tanguy and Homage À Kay both stay around three minutes, and the set also takes in Exercise, Mothers, Flying Belabirds and The Struggle With The 7th. In the jazz.com list of his recordings the album sits between Merlin Vibrations (1983) and Cassava Balls, the 1984 trio with Famoudou Don Moye and Hartmut Geerken.

This is the Black Saint CD 120094-2, which Discogs lists as a reissue of the album first released in 1987 as BSR 20094.