Berlin Skyscraper

Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris was a cornet player who worked with David Murray, Frank Lowe and Billy Bang, but his primary creative tool was conduction, a method of guiding and shaping collective improvisation via baton and hand gestures. This lengthy double CD, recorded in November 1995, places a 17-member ensemble of European jazz and classical players under Morris’s baton, and the music he and they create together is uncanny, unclassifiable, and unforgettable. What becomes apparent the more you listen is how total Morris’s vision is. There is never a moment of hesitation to this music – he knows what he wants, and what he can get from this combination of instruments (horns, strings, prepared-sounding piano, harp, vibes, percussion), and he brings them up and down, one player or section at a time, placing them in coversation with each other until the result is a thrilling blend of modern classical, avant-garde jazz, and pure joyful experiments in sound. Butch Morris’s methods were unique, and as a result, no one else’s music sounds like this.