CD ECM Records Bennie Maupin: The Jewel In The Lotus

1974

Bennie Maupin - Reeds, Voice, Glockenspiel
Herbie Hancock Piano, Electric Piano
Buster Williams Bass
Frederick Waits Drums, Marimba
Billy Hart Drums
Bill Summers Percussion
Charles Sullivan Trumpet

editie Touchstones - format mini-vinil replica, coperti gatefold, cartonate

Bennie Maupin has been an inventive contributor to iconic records including Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew, Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi and Headhunters and Marion Brown’s Afternoon Of A Georgia Faun. His recordings under his own name have been infrequent but his leader debut, is indeed a jewel. “A more selfless album is hard to imagine”, said Down Beat in 1975. “On The Jewel In The Lotus, the sound is supreme, and all the players strive to achieve a thorough blending”. Recorded in New York in 1974, the disc’s personnel is drawn from the circle around Herbie Hancock in the period, but the music has a character all its own.

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Bennie Maupin, the reeds master whose contributions to the landmark Miles Davis Bitches Brew session and to Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi band were so sparingly telling, reemerged last year with an unusual new album… This is the companion-piece… The rich soundscapes of Bitches Brew and early Weather Report are strong references, with Maupin far more of an enabler and a colourist than a flat-out soloist. But his rich tapestries are more acoustic than most early 1970s fusion, and this is an absorbing collage of long flute sounds over marimba vamps and loosely impressionistic percussion, water-churning noises and electric keys washing around brooding bass clarinet lines, airy soprano melodies over Buster Williams’ bowed bass.
John Fordham, The Guardian

Last year’s come-back Penumbra distilled the multi-instrumentalist’s sparse, rhythmically intriguing world-jazz concept to magnificent effect. The Jewel In The Lotus feels mines remarkably similar territory, melding Maupin’s loyalty to Yusef Lateef’s multi-culturalism with the other-worldly, impressionistic stream of ideas he’ forged on Bitches Brew. Remastered by Manfred Eicher, these largely acoustic compositions are way more abstract than Maupin’s groove-loving followers might expect. Instead, he brings in three percussionists, with himself, Buster Williams and Herbie painting loose, Eastern-influenced colours on top. … A sophisticated work of art, well worth revisiting.
Tom Barlow, Jazzwise

This is the first time on CD for a long-unavailable collectors’ item. With The Jewel in the Lotus, Maupin, the great multireedman, produced something visionary and, for some perhaps, joltingly unexpected: a series of mostly rubato aural paintings using piano, electric piano, bass, three drummers, multitracked saxophone, bass clarinet and flute, and trumpet on two tracks. … Soloists include Herbie Hancock and Maupin, but this is a composer’s work; ad libs and interplay notwithstanding, the ensemble is paramount.
Ray Comiskey, Irish Times

Recordings as a leader have been infrequent. This was his first, and now appears for the first time on CD, still sounding entirely fresh and original. … There’s no doubt it’s a very beautiful and unusual creation.
Andy Hamilton, The Wire