Date: Aug 30th, 2011 · Tags: Jazz CD Reviews

Brooklyn-born, six-foot-seven octogenarian pianist/composer Randy Weston has literally been a larger-than-life jazz force for six decades: his percussive pianism was forged from a distinguished keyboard continuum, ranging from m: Duke Ellington and m: Thelonious Monk to m: John Lewis ; his “Little Niles” and “Hi-Fly” are well-worn jazz standards; and the pianist may well be the greatest exponent of the African roots of America’s classical music. Weston lived in Morocco in the 1960s and ’70s, opened a jazz club there, and was virtually a one-man jazz ambassador–particularly to the enigmatic Ganawa (also spelled Gnawa), a black brotherhood of healers that claims ancient Egyptian ancestry, and performs mysterious, trance-like and color-based music, mostly on the three-stringed guimbree and the castanet-like kokobars. All of which inspired this riveting 1972 recording, Weston’s best-selling disc, finally reissued for the first time on CD, during CTI’s fortieth anniversary in 2011…

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Randy Weston: Blue Moses