This 1966 album is a masterpiece from a master musician, writer and arranger. It documents Ellington’s thoughts and feelings from a tour out East. The truth is the influences are near, mid and far East. The opener ‘Tourist Point Of View’ is an energetic piece of modal heaven. ‘Mount Harissa’ is deeper still. ‘Blue Pepper’ grooves, whilst ‘Agra’ has a mystical feel, whilst the Arabic feel to ‘Amad’ is intoxicating and hypnotic. The finale is ‘Ad Lib On Nippon’, an 11-minute opus, whose harmonic complexity is both accessible and mind-blowing at the same time! And that’s before it hits it’s many grooves. Genius, pure genius.
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