Art Lande - Rubisa Patrol (1983 Japanese ECM Limited Edition Reissue Vinyl LP)

Art Lande - Rubisa Patrol | Vinyl LP - 1983 Japanese ECM Limited Edition Reissue (20MJ 9039, ECM Special ¥2000 Series, Polydor K.K.)

• Art Lande’s quartet with a young Mark Isham on trumpet and soprano saxophone, recorded at Talent Studio in Oslo in May 1976 and engineered by Jan Erik Kongshaug for Manfred Eicher
• One of ECM’s most quietly adventurous first-decade recordings, drawing on Chinese, Bulgarian and Roma folk traditions alongside chamber jazz in a programme that ranges from Bill Douglass’s bamboo flute opening to collective improvisation
• Japanese limited edition reissue in the ECM Special ¥2000 series, manufactured by Polydor K.K. with Franco Fontana’s colour landscape cover photography

Art Lande was never a famous pianist. He was, by all accounts from the musicians who worked with him, an exceptional one. He had recorded Red Lanta with Jan Garbarek for ECM in 1973, a spare and intuitive duo session that announced his ear for texture and silence. Three years later, working out of San Francisco, he assembled a quartet called Rubisa Patrol: Mark Isham on trumpet, flugelhorn and soprano saxophone, Bill Douglass on bass and flutes (including bamboo flute), and Glenn Cronkhite on drums and percussion. They toured Europe by van and played regularly around the Bay Area. This album, their first for ECM, was taped at Talent Studio in Oslo with Jan Erik Kongshaug at the desk and Manfred Eicher producing. The programme is Lande’s, with two pieces by Isham, and it covers ground that most jazz quartets of the period wouldn’t have gone near: “Celestial Guests / Many Chinas” opens with Douglass’s bamboo flute over nearly ten minutes that draw on Chinese folk melody, “Romany” works with Roma musical vocabulary, and a 56-second “Bulgarian Folk Tune” sits between them like a passing thought. “Corinthian Melodies” on side two is the album’s centre of gravity, with Douglass’s bass setting a meditative ostinato while Isham’s trumpet floats above it.

Isham was 24 when this was recorded. He would go on to become one of Hollywood’s most prolific film composers, scoring Never Cry Wolf, A River Runs Through It and Crash among many others, but here he is a jazz musician first, and his playing has a directness that suits the quartet’s personality. Lande’s piano draws from Bill Evans but pushes further toward openness, and the rhythm section of Douglass and Cronkhite is responsive rather than assertive. This is the 1983 Japanese limited edition reissue in the ECM Special ¥2000 series, manufactured by Polydor K.K. The cover photograph is by the Italian landscape photographer Franco Fontana. Catalogue number 20MJ 9039 (original ECM catalogue number 1081).