Paniots Nine

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This extraordinary reissue on John Zorn's Avant label uncovers a genuine hidden gem. As Paniots Nine's cover notes expound at length, clarinetist Maneri is a monstrously overlooked jazz musician, who - uniquely - brought the influence of his early experience of playing microtonal folk music in Jewish and Greek wedding bands to bear upon his bebop playing. This synthesis, along with his early embracing of free improvisation and tape manipulation, brought him to the attention of Third Stream theoretician Gunter Schuller, who, in 1961, tried to get a Maneri LP released through Atlantic. The album never saw the light of day, but the sessions recorded for it are all here. While the actual quality of the recordings isn't fabulous, the musical content is awesome. The group - pianist Don Burns, bassist John Beal and drummer Pete Dolger, create real fire out of this avant-klezmer's odd time signatures and ferocious, ardent melodies, prefiguring the work of, say, Don Byron or Zorn's own Masada project by thirty years.