Bennie Maupin - The Jewel In The Lotus

Bennie Maupin has been a musicians’ musician for decades, and a highly inventive contributor, on bass clarinet and saxes, to some important records – including Miles Davis’s “Bitches Brew”, Herbie Hancock’s “Mwandishi” and Marion Brown’s “Afternoon Of A Georgia Faun” (ECM 1970), and sessions with Sonny Rollins, Lee Morgan, McCoy Tyner and dozens more. His recordings as a leader, however, have been infrequent. All the more reason to celebrate the return of this album to the catalogue, Maupin’s very first leader date, now making its debut appearance on CD. “A more selfless album is hard to imagine”, said Down Beat in 1975. “On ‘The Jewel In The Lotus’, the sound is supreme, and all the players strive to achieve a thorough blending”. Produced by Manfred Eicher in New York in 1974, the disc’s personnel is drawn from the circle around Herbie Hancock in the period, but the music has a character all its own, and still sounds entirely contemporary.