Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra Charlie Haden/Germany 1994

The great musician Charlie Haden released innovative works at every milestone in his long career. This is the first release of the final album from the Liberation Music Orchestra’s 1990 third album, “Dream Keeper,” which was released as Haden’s life work. The album features the legendary Amina Claudine Myers, Mick Goodricke, Paul Motian, and others who were also members of the recording team. Liberation Music Orchestra is a rare project that has continued to create innovative music under the leadership of the late Hayden, with a wide range of musicality that covers jazz, blues, spirituals, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa, with roots in folk with a pastoral melancholy, and a grand sound created by different soloists with different personalities for each work. This must-have item has arrived, recorded on the label’s own carefully mastered, high-quality stereo soundboard recording of the performance at Festebarzelt am Fischmarkt in Hamburg, Germany on July 21, 1994, focusing on songs from the masterpiece “Dream Keeper,” the third L.M.O. album released by Blue Note in 1990, which was nominated for a Grammy Award and won Downbeat Magazine’s Album of the Year. The performance also features Ken McIntyre, Amina Claudine Myers, Mick Goodrick, Paul Motian, and others who also participated in the recording. “Dream Keeper” is the third album by Liberation Music Orchestra, the renowned bassist/composer who went beyond the category of jazz and sadly passed away in 2014 at the age of 76. The title track, arranged and conducted by his friend Carla Bley, and “Spiritual,” one of Charlie’s best original works, are powerful works with the most primitive sound and melancholy among L.M.O.’s works, and the whole album is accompanied by a beautiful melody that reminds you of nostalgia and a blues/gospel atmosphere that is the origin of all music, and time flows gracefully and slowly… a masterpiece! This performance almost perfectly reproduces this masterpiece live, and Hayden, who creates the overall flow with his characteristic warm tone and simple lyrical melody both in the background and solo, and Amina Claudine Myers, who can be said to be the main character of the masterpiece “Dream Keeper” even though Carla is not there, are simply wonderful. Amina is a pianist/organist/singer/composer, known for leading her own band as one of the few female members of the cutting-edge AACM, as well as for her collaborations with Henry Threadgill, Lester Bowie, James Brad Ulmer, and her performances in Japan with Bill Laswell. She also left behind a hidden masterpiece, a cover album of songs by the great blues queen Bessie Smith, who had been active since the 1920s. With her piano playing that exudes the strength of a noble and dignified black woman, her generous, graceful and beautiful melodies rooted in the African soil, and her spiritual singing voice, she demonstrates her presence as the core of L.M.O. of this era. Furthermore, McIntyre’s alto, discovered by Eric Dolphy, Goodrick’s versatile guitar, Motian, Charlie’s one and only drummer, who is said to create a unique spirituality just by playing together, and other skilled members sing unique solos, forming a magnificent, coordinated sound as a whole, but also weaving together the music like a story, filled with the excitement and passion that can only be found in a live performance…It is a beautiful performance that will leave you entranced, filled from start to finish with warm music rooted in Hayden’s deep love!!!