Concerto for Guitar (Suite for guitar and Jazz Piano Trio)

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With the success of his Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano Trio, Claude Bolling had stumbled upon a cottage industry: round up a willing classical soloist regardless of instrument, let him be himself, insert a piano part that plays ambassador between the classical and jazz camps, and voila! a neat little crossover record. The Guitar Concerto is one of the best manifestations of Bolling's personal solution to the perennial Third Stream puzzle, incorporating Spanish ideas into the guitar part, moving his piano in and out of the jazz rhythms with an easy Continental elegance, coming up with attractive pastiche tunes in the baroque and classical idioms. The 5/4 theme and guitar/piano juxtapositions of "Hispanic Dance" remind one of Dave Brubeck's famous experiments in odd meters, and "Serenade" makes delicious use of a bossa nova groove. The Greek/Italian classical guitarist Alexander Lagoya is the sharp-edged soloist; Bolling is equally at home in both stylistic camps (though the piano is sometimes a wee bit out of tune), and Michel Gaudry (bass) and Marcel Sabiani (drums) make up the rhythm section. Note: the first version of this performance, released on RCA in 1976, contains the six-movement edition of the Concerto; Bolling later added a seventh movement that was tacked onto this recording when CBS reissued it in 1982. Also, the Finale features a different rhythm section (Marc Michel, bass; André Arpino, drums).

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