This two-hour-plus opus is billed as "a chronotransduction." With music by Carla Bley and lyrics/text are by Paul Haines, the project was recorded over nearly three years (1968-1971) in several locations and with nearly a hundred people involved in one way or another (musicians, singers, speakers). Those involved included a veritable who's who of the jazz world at that time (from Don Cherry to John McLaughlin) along with such unexpected combinations of singers as Linda Ronstadt and Jack Bruce.
The music ranges from cabaret pieces to bits of early electronica, and from rock to elaborate post-bop large ensemble scoring.ESCALATOR is not an opera, but rather is closer to musical theater--"Holiday In Risk" is a hybrid avant-garde Broadway number, minus the stage production. All the various strains of Bley's writing are given the room they need on this two-disc set (originally released as a box set of three full-length records). The piece as a whole doesn't yield answers easily, but that hardly matters when the listening experience has been made this engaging.
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At the time, this was probably the longest jazz-generated work in existence (its length has since been exceeded by recent pieces like Wynton Marsalis' Blood On the Fields), a massive, messy, all-encompassing, all-star ego trip that nevertheless gave Carla Bley an immense cachet of good will among the avant-garde. Bley and librettist Paul Haines called it a "chronotransduction," whatever that means. The critics called it a jazz opera -- which it isn't. Escalator is, however, very much of its time, a late-'60s attempt to let a thousand flowers bloom and indulge in every trendy influence that Bley could conceive. There is rock music, early synthesizer and ring modulator experiments, the obligatory Indian section, repeated outbreaks of Weimar Republic cabaret in 3/4 time that both mock and revere European tradition. The incomprehensible "libretto" and a good deal of the lugubrious writing for big band amount to a textbook of avant-garde pretension. And yet sometimes this unwieldy hash pulls itself together -- the woolly, somber, sectional "Hotel Overture" with avant-squeal solos from clarinetist Perry Robinson and the young Gato Barbieri in all his Wild Bull of the Pampas glory, the clear voice of Linda Ronstadt brightening up a song called "Why," Don Cherry's clarion trumpet work, the power trio of John McLaughlin, Jack Bruce and Paul Motian rumbling energetically away amidst the Indian structures of "Rawalpindi Blues." Originally released on three LPs, an almost unheard-of extravagance in 1971, today this giant relic fits comfortably on two CDs. Yet the hard-to-find LP version does have an advantage, for the work concludes with an endless windy drone via one of those locked run-out grooves, an effect that obviously cannot be transferred to a CD, which shuts off automatically. ~ Richard S. Ginell, All Music Guide (http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,53831,00.html)
CD1
01. Hotel Overture (13:12)
02. This is Here... (6:02)
03. Like Animals (1:21)
04. Escalator Over the Hill (4:57)
05. Stay Awake (1:32)
06. Ginger and David (1:40)
07. Song to Anything That Moves (2:22)
08. EOTH Theme (0:36)
09. Businessmen (5:39)
10. Ginger and David Theme (0:57)
11. Why (2:19)
12. It's Not What You Do (0:18)
13. Detective Writer Daughter (3:17)
14. Doctor Why (1:28)
15. Slow Dance (1:51)
16. Smalltown Agonist (5:24)
CD2
01. End of Head (0:38)
02. Over Her HEad (2:38)
03. Little Pony Soldier (4:36)
04. Oh Say Can You Do? (1:11)
05. Holiday in Risk (3:10)
06. Holiday in Risk Theme (0:53)
07. A.I.R. (All India Radio) (3:58)
08. Rawalpindi Blues (12:45)
09. End of Rawalpindi (9:40)
10. End of Animals (1:26)
11. ...And It's Again (27:17)
Personnel:
