Lloyd Miller - A Lifetime In Oriental Jazz

This is the definitive anthology of pioneering ethno-musicologist, mystical adventurer and real life jazz guru Dr Lloyd Miller on Jazzman! This album tells the fascinating life story of one man and his journey through Europe and the Middle East, living off nothing but his wits, talent and an open-minded attitude towards music and jazz. Master of dozens of languages and hundreds of instruments, Miller has spent fifty years immersed in the music of Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Featuring recordings taken from incredibly rare privately pressed albums, live sessions in Europe, and previously unreleased material, A Lifetime in Oriental Jazz tells the story of his extraordinary personal journey from the West Coast to the Far East. Played on a plethora of exotic instruments from around the world, Miller's music is a unique blend of jazz with the modal and spiritual sounds of traditional Asian and Middle Eastern music. Spiritual jazz, Eastern jazz - direct from the source!
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Arriving on a disc that's been stuffed to breaking point, this album gives a complete career overview of the works of Dr Lloyd Miller, an ethno-musicologist and jazz maestro whose recordings are quite unlike anything else you might have heard from the '60s. On the opening piece 'Gol-E Gandom' the combination of the santur (an instrument of Persian ancestry) with a more traditional jazz ensemble is immediately striking and disorientating, yet the meshing of the two cultures is seamless and fluid. After a few moments of solo santur the last thing you expect is a heavy, swinging rhythm section weighing in with modal piano keyings. The Middle-Eastern themes persist into the Turkish-influenced 'Gozel Guzler', while 'Indo-European Improvisations' finds Miller using the sarod to alternate between traditional Indian scales and a usage that's predominantly more in-keeping with Western jazz sensibilities. There's much to be discovered here, and Miller clearly reveals himself as something of a master across a range of instrumental disciplines. Fans of jazz's more exploratory, Eastern-facing practitioners of the era - from Alice Coltrane to Salah Ragab - will no doubt find plenty of appreciation for Miller's work. Highly recommended.