release date: Mar. 26, 1996
format: cd (ECM 1585)
[album rate: 3 / 5] [3,18]
producer: Manfred Eicher
label: ECM Records - nationality: Norway
Track highlights: 1. "Red Wind" - 2. "The Creek" (4 / 5) - 3. "The Survivor" - 9. "Giulietta" - 12. "The Quest"
Studio album by Jan Garbarek released as a solo release, although, it features more or less the same musicians who are part of Jan Garbarek Group and who released Twelve Moons (1993) and comprises Rainer Brüninghaus on keyboards, Eberhard Weber on bass, Manu Katché on drums, and Marilyn Mazur on percussion. Also, the music is very much like that specific release. The style is more on the fusion side than on the traditional folk, which is the downside of the album. Imho, the fusion and free jazz elements do not suit his playing style nor reflect his originality the best. There are enough artists and releases from the '70s who have experimented with jazz fusion with large orchestral compositions, and I'm not a big fan of that. This release closes in on the smooth jazz and jazz fusion of Chick Corea, Pat Metheny, Al Jarreau, Al Di Meola, Keith Jarrett, Herbie Hancock, and many more that I just don't appreciate. Yes, they are undoubtedly great instrumentalists, and they have huge crowds lauding their music - I'm just not one of them. However, this is also a turning point in Garbarek's music. At this point he has returned to his earliest releases of more free jazz but he has expanded it with percussion-based fusion jazz and moved away from the ambient style and traditional folk, and that's an area he dwells in and explores in the following many releases that I find are less interesting compared to his music of the 1980s and earliest 1990s.
Garbarek is not just one of Norway's or Scandinavia's - he's one of the world's finest contemporary jazz musicians, and despite not being one of my favourites by his hands, the album still offers fine music.
