By the time
Neil Ardley issued 1972's
A Symphony of Amaranths, he'd played piano and composed for the
John Williams Big Band and directed the
New Jazz Orchestra on their classic 1969 set
Le Déjeuner Sur L'Herbe. That year he directed and arranged strings on
Colosseum's
Valentyne Suite and recorded his debut album,
Greek Variations & Other Aegean Exercises (co-credited to
Don Rendell and
Ian Carr), as the first part in a trilogy. 1972's
A Symphony of Amaranths was the second part, and the third was 1976's jazz-rock
Kaleidoscope of Rainbows. Released by
Regal Zonophone, the set boasted mature compositions performed by classical, jazz, R&B, and pop musicians.
Ardley's orchestra included reeds, winds, brass, chamber strings, glockenspiel, harp, and more.
The set includes two suites in the title piece, and
Three Poems (that feature vocalist
Norma Winstone). Between them is "The Dong with the Luminous Nose." The 25-minute title suite, dedicated to
Gil Evans and
Duke Ellington, adorns classical charts with jazz colors and textures; elements of
Evans' third stream fuse classical, jazz, and cinematic composition; from
Ellington, expansive rhythmic signatures, sophisticated harmonies, and bright dynamics gather under
Ardley's accessible yet idiosyncratic vision.
The first movement, "Carillon," offers a dialogue between classical expressionism, New Orleans jazz, swing, progressive jazz, and hard bop. "Nocturne" is positively
Debussyian. Led by strings, oboe, and bassoon, the harp, bass, and horns all join in before
Harry Beckett's trumpet solo illuminates the harmony.
Barbara Thompson's tenor sax solo rips the lid off as the tune moves out. "Nocturne" and "Impromptu" join progressive jazz to third stream fusion as strings, horns, and percussion ratchet across progressive big band and modal jazz before harp and strings carry it out elegantly.
Ivor Cutler, a poet, singer, songwriter, and humorist from Scotland, drolly presides (in absentia) over the rhyming lyrics in "The Dong with a Luminous Nose," a musical narrative joining poetry to modernist jazz inside a poem by
Edward Lear. Its first two-thirds are mysterious; they create noir-ish tension between film music and radio theater. Harp, strings, bass, and brushed drums carry it, then cut loose with Afro-Cuban rhythms and son pulses from the electric piano. The 12-plus-minute
Three Poems features
Norma Winstone singing poems by
W.B Yeats,
James Joyce, and
Lewis Carroll with
Ardley's charts. In
Yeats' "After Long Silence," an impressionistic strings-and-winds intro teases but quickly reveals
Jon Hiseman's drum kit guiding the group as they move toward vanguard jazz but don't break the swinging groove. On
Joyce's "She Weeps for Rahoon," the iconic singer is at once sensitive and commanding, offering the words as living entities rife with rebirth.
Ardley's orchestra swings across modal and brightly arranged hard bop behind her voice.
A Symphony of Amaranths may be part of a trilogy, but it stands heads and shoulders above its companions. Its gloriously assembled, dazzling tunes successfully combine fantastically varied, not always consonant styles, textures, and dramas to create a historic, visionary work in the annals of British jazz. ~ Thom Jurek
