* Edition of 300 copies. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a printed insert. * “Beautiful United Harmony Happening” / “The Education of an Amphibian” - the second release by Alga Marghen’s brand new free jazz imprint, Formalibera - is also dedicated to the output of John Tchicai following his return to Copenhagen during the mid 1960s. Comprising two pieces, remarkably, this single LP effectively bookends a rich period of activity for the saxophonist, capturing one of his earliest group formations as a leader from 1966, as well as one of his last, most probably from 1971, before retiring from music for four years in order to dedicate his energies to spiritual study.

“The Education of an Amphibian”, recorded by the John Tchicai Octet - Tchicai, Shahib Shahab, Hugh Steinmetz, Niels Husum, Kim Menzer, Petrus Kuiters, Mauritz Tchicai, and Giorgio Musoni - in October of 1966, represents the first documented attempts by Tchicai as a leader working within a “Komponist Udøver Ensemble”, or “Composing Improvisers Orchestra”, structure, an approach, in his hands, that set out to blur the boundaries between improvisation and composition, and, in this case, utilises a musical vocabulary drawn from contemporary classical and African traditions. Working collectively with Tchicai determining the pieces loose sets of frameworks. Clocking in at just over 15 minutes, the work is a profound gesture of restraint and space over the majority of its duration, allowing each player to dance and shine within a fairly limited palette of texture, tone, and polyrhythm - the most notable being a wild and explosive solo on harpsichord by Kuiters, that sounds something like a synthesiser losing its mind - but certainly doesn’t end there with killer playing by all parties, including stellar work by Tchicai, trumpeter Hugh Steinmetz, and saxophonist-flutist Shahib Shahab, as the group slowly gathers to the collective storm of complex harmonic fire that it reaches toward the piece’s end, embodying what Tchicai once called “a chaos with some kind of order.”

The first piece on the LP, “Beautiful United Harmony Happening”, is one of the saxophonist’s last endeavours with his collective, Cadentia Nova Danica, before retiring from music for four years in order to dedicate his energies to spiritual study. Like much of his work with that group, it belongs to an expansive approach to creativity that incorporated the gestures of artists from various creative disciplines to create “happenings” that, as Ed Hazell points out in the album’s liner notes: “introduced elements that challenged ideas about virtuosity and legitimate expression. Random elements were embraced, and non-Western music and concepts were welcome”. Taking up the entire first side of the LP, “Beautiful United Harmony Happening” is an excerpt from the full two-hour performance that was one such event.

Here we encounter Cadentia Nova Danica in a reasonably small line up of Tchicai, Anthony Barnett, Ole Kühl, Marianne Tchicai, and Anne Øster, joined by the saxophonist and bandleader’s longtime friend and collaborator, Don Cherry, as well five disciples of the Swami Narayanananda Universal Yoga Ashrama, (Tchicai lived at the yogi’s ashram and had organized the choir himself), and the Diane Black Dance Theatre, offering a window into a multimedia event that attempted to interrogate the relationship between experimental contemporary art and ritualist religious/meditative practice. At the time, Tchicai wrote, “I’m interested in finding the genuine source of life in myself and the genuine source of music. I think those two considerations are tied up very much. I have certain spiritual beliefs about human beings, and the best place to find these sources of music are to look into the yoga and Zen teachings.” These ideas percolate across the length of “Beautiful United Harmony Happening”, with a collective improvisation of ten flutes playing simple motifs introducing the piece, before evolving into a remarkable series of duos and solos that move within a processional, ritualistic march of rhythm and choral phrases.

While largely guided by Tchicai’s singular sense of openness and complex sense of structure and harmonic interplay, there is a playfulness, joy, and chanting sense of ritualism that illuminates fascinating connections between his work and journey through life with that of Don Cherry, who shines throughout the piece. Truly amazing and engrossing, it’s impossible to overstate the importance of this remarkable recording within the broader history of free jazz and creative action during this period. Alga Marghen’s brand new free jazz imprint, Formalibera, has done us a great service by bringing it into the world for the first time, more than half a century since it was laid to tape. Issued in a beautiful, limited vinyl edition of 300 copies, with in-depth exploratory liner notes by veteran jazz writer, Ed Hazell, this one has serious heat!