Bob Downes Open Music
Electric City
Legit reissue of this Underground classic, originally on Vertigo. England circa 1970 was a hotbed of jazz-rock crossover activity. On one hand, progressive rock was in its first flowering, and jazz flavors and players were beginning to find the way to the rock world open to them for the first time. On the other, the breakthroughs of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, et al., were inspiring a new generation of British jazz musicians to push the envelope. The former found adventurous bands like Colosseum…
Crossing Borders
This is a previously unreleased recording from the late '70s by Bob Downes Open Music. Bob Downes is a multi-instrumentalist composer possessing a distinctive musical personality and prowess. Through bodily breath emanates sublime sounds from an array of flutes, poignant patterns from his alto and tenor saxophone performances, and engaging expressions of complimentary vocalizations. Open Music is the moniker under which Bob has produced an eclectic range of records since 1968. However, none of t…
Episodes at 4AM
Bob Downes is most often thought of as a jazz flautist, composer and group leader, but throughout his varied career that has included such diverse musical activity as working with the John Barry Seven and playing on Egg's second LP, he also had his own fluid conceptual group Open Music with principle bass player Barry Guy and drummer Denis Smith. Other players that passed through Open Music include Chris Spedding, Kenny Wheeler, Ray Russell, Ian Carr, Henry Lowther, Harry Beckett, Harry Miller, …