Escalator Over the Hill

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Despite being widely recognized as one jazz's most ambitious projects, Carla Bley's massive "chronotransduction" Escalator Over The Hill had never been performed live until 1997, when it was staged in Cologne with an almost entirely new cast. It worked so well at that show that it tours europe this Summer. To celebrate this, ECM sister label Jazz Composers' Orchestra Association is re-issuing the orginal, recorded between 1968 and 71, as a special CD package. It remains a remarkable work, melding jazz, operas, rock, songwriting and big band composition. Its vast cast included Jack Bruce, Gato Barbieri, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, John McLaughlin, Paul Motian, Linda Ronstadt, Dewey Redman, Jimmy Lyons, Enrico Rava, Michael Mantler... and on and on. Yes, this kind of massive, cross-cultural experiment can have all the wrong connotations, but don't let expectations brought on by less genuinely ambitious projects put you off. Escalator is certainly overwrought, but it's its own world, and unsurpassed almost three decades on.