Oregon - Winter Light (1975 Japanese Vanguard Vinyl LP)

Vinyl: VG+
Sleeve: VG+
Obi: None

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Oregon - Winter Light | Vinyl LP - 1975 Japanese Vanguard (SR-3183, King Record Co. Ltd)

Oregon came out of the Paul Winter Consort in the early 1970s, and by the time they recorded Winter Light (their third album for Vanguard) they had developed a group language that no other ensemble in jazz could replicate. The instrumentation is the first thing that sets them apart. Ralph Towner plays classical and 12-string guitar alongside piano and French horn. Paul McCandless plays oboe, English horn and bass clarinet, instruments almost never heard in a jazz context. Glen Moore covers bass, violin, flute and piano. Collin Walcott, who studied tabla with Alla Rakha and sitar with Ravi Shankar, plays both alongside congas, dulcimer and clarinet. Between the four of them, they have access to an orchestra's worth of colour without ever sounding like one. "Tide Pool" opens side A with the kind of slow, detailed ensemble writing that rewards quiet listening, the instruments entering one at a time and building a texture that shifts like something tidal. "Witchi-Tai-To" is the one cover on the album, Jim Pepper's melody drawn from a Kaw nation peyote song. Pepper was a Native American jazz musician from Portland, Oregon, and the group's connection to the Pacific Northwest runs through the piece naturally. Their version strips Pepper's original funk arrangement back to acoustic instruments and finds the song's meditative centre.

Side B covers more ground. "Fond Libre" opens with McCandless's oboe in a passage that could sit in a classical recital before Walcott's tabla pulls the rhythm into something else entirely. "Street Dance" is two minutes of compressed energy. "Rainmaker" has Towner's guitar at its most rhythmic, underpinned by Walcott's percussion in a piece that builds and recedes. "Poes" stretches past five minutes in a reflective, open-ended group improvisation. "Margueritte" closes the album with a melodic simplicity that balances the more complex ensemble pieces on side A. The cover photograph is Walcott's own. This is the 1975 Japanese pressing on Vanguard SR-3183, manufactured and distributed by King Record Co. Ltd. The US original was released in 1974.