Andrew Hill: Point of Departure (Blue Note Classic Vinyl series) [BLUE NOTE]

Why you'll love it

This Classic Vinyl series pressing was mastered from the original analog tapes by Kevin Gray and pressed on 180g vinyl. The Penguin Guide to Jazz gives it four stars plus its special crown and puts it in its Core Collection.

This edition

• Blue Note Classic Vinyl series
• 180g vinyl
• Mastered from the original analog tapes by Kevin Gray
• Pressed in the EU
• Stereo mix

About the album

Andrew Hill wrote music that sounds like it's leaning slightly to one side, on purpose. On March 21, 1964, he walked into Rudy Van Gelder's studio with five originals full of odd bar lengths and shifting moods, and a sextet good enough to make them swing anyway. The album came out on Blue Note the following year.

The lineup is a small miracle: Eric Dolphy on alto, bass clarinet and flute, Joe Henderson on tenor, Kenny Dorham on trumpet, Richard Davis on bass and an 18-year-old Tony Williams on drums. "Refuge" opens with a churning modal drive, "New Monastery" twists through Hill's angular themes, "Spectrum" lets Dolphy change instruments mid-flight, and "Flight 19" bounces. "Dedication," first titled "Cadaver," was written to express a feeling of great loss, and it moved Dorham to tears in the studio. Alfred Lion produced, Rudy Van Gelder engineered, Nat Hentoff wrote the liner notes, and Reid Miles shot and designed the cover.

AllMusic's Thom Jurek reckons it still points the way to the future for jazz, sixty years on. Most of us are still working out where the present went.

Also at Kops: more Andrew Hill on vinyl · browse Modern Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Blue Note (cat# 4535330), a reissue of the 1965 album.