George Gruntz
Jazz Icons: Rahsaan Roland Kirk presents three astounding concerts by this musical superhero playing his entire instrumental arsenal of saxophone, flute, manzello, stritch, clarinet, siren and whistles— oftentimes simultaneously! Kirk is backed by extraordinary side musicians including legendary bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, drummers Alex Riel and Daniel Humair, and long-time pianist Ron Burton who keep the fire and swing burning throughout Rahsaan’s blazing workouts. This collection also includes two different renditions of “Three For The Festival,” arguably Kirk’s most spectacular performance piece, showcasing Rahsaan as a thunderous acrobatic player whose multiple horn work was all jazz and no gimmick.
While on an automobile tour of Italy with his mother, the German publisher in this story has an accident which results in her death. He decides to stay and look for work in Italy, rather than return to his responsibilities, and takes a job working on a construction site. His co-workers are similarly displaced men: one is a Greek exile, the other a Basque terrorist. The elaborate house they are working on is to be the home of a wealthy local man.
In the bourgeois circles of Europe after the Great War, can anything save the modern man? Harry Haller, a solitary intellectual, has all his life feared his dual nature of being human and being a beast. He's decided to die on his 50th birthday, which is soon. He's rescued from his solipsism by the mysterious Hermine, who takes him dancing, introduces him to jazz and to the beautiful and whimsical Maria, and guides him into the hallucinations of the Magic Theater, which seem to take him into Hell. Can humour, sin, and derision lead to salvation?
Tells of the tribulations of a middle-aged official of the Austro-Hungarian Bureau of Weights and Measures in fighting the local shopkeepers and traders whose weights are frequently light.
