Search - Glen Hall, Gil Evans :: Mother of the Rock

Gil returns to his Canadian roots

Bob Phillips | 46600 Creysse, France | 01/20/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Glen Hall may not be a famliar name, and so this is probably a CD which Gil Evans enthusiasts tend to overlook. Hall is a Canadian composer-arranger-tenor player, and this session recorded in Toronto in 1985 features his strikingly original music arranged by Gil (who was himself Toronto-born). There are all manner of influences here, from Eastern mysticism to the blues of Muddy Waters, and the entire recording forms a suite. Glen Hall is clearly a devotee of Gil's music - but then so were a host of other musicians - and he speaks fondly of him in the excellent sleeve notes written by Larry Hicock, whose book on Gil, wittily entitled "Castles Made Of Sound", was published last year.A percussion quartet, Nexus, is featured with a 12-piece orchestra, and the title track, inspired by the Koran, is referred to by Hall as "the source of all prophetic revelation and the matrix of the universe itself"- which maybe sounds a mite pretentious, but the music itself is, if anything, jaunty. As a collector of Gil Evans music, I was bound to buy this, but you don't have to be an obsessive fan to find a great deal of enjoyment in this music. Is it all jazz ? No, of course not - but they onc asid that about "Sketches of Spain"."