Of Love and Peace cover

Of Love and Peace

Released

Can you play free jazz on an organ? Absolutely, and Larry Young does it on this 1966 release, the follow-up to the brilliant Unity and his third Blue Note album overall. The band features Eddie Gale on trumpet, James Spaulding on alto sax and flute, Herbert Morgan on tenor sax, and two drummers, Wilson Moorman III and Jerry Thomas. They play composer Morton Gould’s “Pavanne,” the second movement of a classical work called the American Symphonette No. 2, turning it into a 14-minute blowout; they also take the hammer and tongs to Miles Davis’s “Seven Steps To Heaven.” The title track and “Falaq” are Young originals, but they’re mostly platforms for free improvisation, the horns wailing like a half-drunk choir or taking screaming, high-flying solos as Young leans on the keys and the drummers do battle. If you’ve come in search of groove, seek elsewhere, but as an abstract exploration of musical possibility, Of Love & Peace is very much worth your time.

Phil Freeman

Recommended by

Suggestions
Conversation cover

Conversation

David Liebman
Dialectic Soul cover

Dialectic Soul

Asher Gamedze
Gefion cover

Gefion

Jakob Bro, Thomas Morgan, Jon Christensen
Live at MCG cover

Live at MCG

David Liebman
Something Like Now cover

Something Like Now

Moutin Reunion Quartet
Pathways cover

Pathways

Dave Holland
Civil War Diaries cover

Civil War Diaries

Bill Carrothers
Erta Ale cover

Erta Ale

Paal Nilssen-Love, Large Unit