Complete Live at the Hillcrest Club

Just as the famous 1940-41 Jerry Newman recordings at Minton's and Clark Monroe's Uptown House captured the transition from Swing to Bebop, the music on this CD marks one of the first steps from Bebop into what would soon be called 'Free Jazz'. The whole quintet consisted of modern players working with the same concept: A freer way of playing Jazz, which transcended the strict confines of melody, harmony and rhythm. They would create a whole new idiom by constructing music via the interplay of simultaneous collective improvisation. These concerts are the only known recorded works of Paul Bley with Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry or Billy Higgins, both separately and as a unit. Even though it may not have been a regular unit or a stylistically defined group, the quintet heard on these historic Hillcrest recordings shows a highly creative level, and transmits a contagious excitement and a continuous search for new musical ideas and new ways to express themselves that makes this music as impressive today as it was when it was first performed nearly fifty years ago. Gambit. 2007.