Von den neuen CDs wohl die, über die ich mich am meisten freue – die drei enthaltenen LPs entstanden für Strata East (SES 1972-3 und SES-7422) und Miff Music Company (KRS-1006). Auf den ersten Sessions von 1968/69 sind Johnny Coles (auf einem Stück Jimmy Owens), Jack Jeffers, Julius Watkins (auf einem – anderen als dem Owens – Stück Garnett Brown), Al Gibbons, Howard Johnson, Bross Townsend, Herb Bushler und Smith zu hören, auf den nächsten von 1973 dann Norman Spiller, Jeffers, Sharon Freeman, Courtney Winter, George Barrow, Johnson, Townsend, Greg Maker, Omar Clay und Smith, dann folgen Sessions von 1977 mit ähnlicher Besetzung (Vincent Chauncey, Gary Gordon, Dave Moore für Freeman, Johnson und Maker, neu dabei Kenyatte Abdur-Rahman) und 1982 (Freeman für Chancey, ohne Jeffers, und am zweiten Bass wieder Bushler).
Otto Flückiger zitiert in seinen Liner Notes ausgiebig Warren Smith:
The group started in 1960 primarily because my friends and I were frustrated by the lack of opportunities to play our music for even our own enjoyment (much less to make a living). We all began write charts and scheduled weekly rehearsals. Jack Jeffers, Coleridge Perkins and I were the main organizers and contributors at this time. My writing consisted mainly of taking arrangements I liked (by Horace Silver, Gerald Wilson and others) off the records and orchestrating them to fit our needs.
We gave our first concert in December 1962 at the Carnegie Recital Hall. Since that time, we’ve managed to perform at least once a year in concert. Thus the title: „We’ve Been Around“.
The Composer Workshop Ensemble was organized to create an outlet for a group of musicians to perform non-commercial music. The group is dedicated to playing compositions that perpetuate the art of Black music and also give performes a creative outlet with which to express themselves. The outlet is one rarely found on the American scene.
My objectives are to express myself in a group concept thru musical composition and improvisation. We want to soudn human with all the imperfection and beauty on a living thing. To accomplish this everyone in the band must be involved. The rhythm section must phrase, sing, harmonize, use dynamics; the horns must punch, push or hold back the motions. We try to breathe, cry, laugh and shout together, realizing that an unified effort is much more powerful than a single voice – no matter how brilliant.~ Warren Smith, zit. nach Otto Flückiger, Liner Notes zu Claves Records CD 50-1195/2, 1995
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #164: Neuheiten aus dem Archiv, 10.6., 22:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba