Discography March 2008	HOME

 

More than you know On the track of Dexter Gordon’s 1976 comeback and Palle Mikkelborg as a composer by Jørgen Mathiasen

 

1976 saw a a major change to the better in the reception in the USA of Dexter Gordon. Just one year before he left Denmark, where he had stayed since 1962, to establish himself as a leader of a permanent group, he was the featured soloist at two sessions made in Copenhagen in February and March 1975. The musical director of the music was Palle Mikkelborg, who also contributed with his own composition titled Good Morning Sun and with this the Gordon sessions became a harbinger of the suite Aura from 1984 and the recordings with Miles Davis.

The Gordon sessions were made for the Danish label SteepleChase. They were published on the LPs SCS 1030 and 1145, the former with the title More Than You Know the latter as Strings & Things. Steeplechase also issued the recordings on the CD’s numbered 31030 and 31145.

The discographical entry below for the recordings in February 1975 contains a collective lineup including brass, strings and a rhythm section, but Mikkelborg actually scored the music for three different configurations distributed on [1, 7/8] - [2, 3, 4/5] - [6] of this collective:

 

1975/02/21 to 1975/02/23 Copenhagen

Dexter Gordon And Orchestra: Allan Botschinsky (tp, flhrn) Benny Rosenfeld (tp, flhrn) Idrees Sulieman (tp, flhrn) Preben Garnov (frhrn) Vincent Nilsson (tb) Richard Boone (tb) Axel Windfeld (b-tb) Bent Larsen (fl, alt-fl, b-fl) Erwin Jacobsen (oboe, cor-ang) Dexter Gordon (ts, ss-1, vo-3) Per Walther (vln) Mogens Holm Larsen (vln) Aage Knudsen (vln-1) Bjarne Boie Rasmussen (vla) Erling Christensen (vcl) Luba Boschenko (harp) Thomas Clausen (p, el-p) Kenneth Knudsen (synth-2) Ole Molin (g) Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen (b, el-b) Ed Thigpen (d) Klavs Nordsø (congas) Sanne Salomonsen (vo-2) Palle Mikkelborg (cond, arr, vo-2)

1....	Naima	(1)		SteepleChase SCS 1030, SteepleChase SCCD 31030
2	Good Morning Sun	(2		SteepleChase SCS 1030, SteepleChase SCCD 31030
3	This Happy Madness	(3)..		SteepleChase SCS 1145, SteepleChase SCCD 31030 SteepleChase SCCD 31145
4	Ernie's Tune		(master)....	SteepleChase SCCD 31145
5	Ernie's Tune		(alt)	SteepleChase SCS 1030, SteepleChase SCCD 31030
6	Tivol			SteepleChase SCS 1030, SteepleChase SCCD 31030
7	More Than You Know		(master)	SteepleChase SCCD 31145
8	More Than You Know....		(alt)	SteepleChase SCS 1030, SteepleChase SCCD 31030

Notes
2) Vocal additions and synthesizer recorded at the session the 27MAR1975.

1975/03/27 Copenhagen

Dexter Gordon and Orchestra: Palle Mikkelborg (tp, cond, arr) Idrees Sulieman (flhrn) Vincent Nilsson (tb) Dexter Gordon (ts) Thomas Clausen (el-p) Kenneth Knudsen (synth) Ole Molin (g) Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen (el-b) Alex Riel (d) Klavs Nordsø (cond, perc)

1....	The Girl With The Purple Eyes....	(master)....	SteepleChase SCCD 31145
2	The Girl With The Purple Eyes	(alt)	SteepleChase SCS 1030, SteepleChase SCCD 31030

Notes
The brass voices were overdubbed. The record company has on SCCD 31145 dated the master MAY1976 and this has been repeated in different discographical sources. Actually there is no session for SteepleChase with Gordon in May 1976. Instead Gordon participated in a session under the musical direction of Esko Linnavalli originally issued on Finnlevy and re-published by SteepleChase on SCCD 31145. A number of circumstances make it likely that the master was indeed recorded on the same date as the alternate take.

The relation to Aura

With the recording of More Than You Know Mikkelborg took a new step as a composer. At the same time the recor­dings contained themes and arrangement devices Mikkelborg was to use when he in 1984 composed the suite Aura.

In December 1984 Miles Davis was to come to Denmark and receive the Sonning Music Award. Palle Mikkelborg, who had closely observed Davis’ music for decades, was commissioned to write a composition for the event and the result was Aura. It was premiered the 14DEC1984 with Mikkelborg as a conductor of the Danish Radio Big Band and a number of soloists and broadcasted by Radio Denmark in a live transmission. (This performance of Aura has not been issued, but the author of this article has tape copies of the transmission and has seen the score to Aura.)

It is well known that Miles Davis was impressed by Mikkelborg’s composition and already in January 1985 he returned to Denmark in order to record the work. (It has among other issues also been issued on Col 463351 2 [CD]. A detailed discographical account for these recordings can be seen in Jan Lohmann’s Davis discography The Sound of Miles Davis, Copenhagen 1992.)

Colours had been an original part of Mikkelborg’s plan for the composition and the audience in the concert room learned about it through the illumination of the room during the concert. During the recording of the suite it was decided to use the colours as titles. Thus the A-section of Aura became the title White on the record.
Also during the recording one of the most important changes in comparison with the concert version was the cutting up of the original score into sections, which presented its different parts as pieces in the tradition of improvised and popular music, however at the expense of the character of an uninterrupted development the score originally had. Finally, a new intro was created with elements from the score and instead of being the opener of the work White became the first of the colour pieces.
For this section Mikkelborg had once again used the theme of Good Morning Sun, originally scored for flute and harp, now scored for oboe. However, parts of the original score were cut out during the recording, and from the original A1-A5 of White only section A1 was kept. The original theme of Good Morning Sun begins at 1:39 of White.

Even more significant in the 1975 recordings with Dexter Gordon are the transitions and scorings used in Good Morning Sun. Thus we can in the recording of the piece at 2:33 – 3:46 hear a transition and a scoring in which Mikkelborg produces a shift in character from meditative to energetic. The tempo accelerates and the transition leads to a point of departure where the soloing in a fast tempo begins. He reused this device as well as the sound of it in Aura.
Less successful in the arrangement of Good Morning Sun, it must be said, is the way back to the slow pulse, which was made by fading the fast-tempo soloing of Gordon down and fading up the returning main theme now scored for strings. A technological instead of a composed solution. Palle Mikkelborg was bound to find another way for the concert version of Aura, and did already with the arrangement of Ernie's Tune. More Than You Know was a significant step for him as a composer and arranger. And the beginning of the end of the European Diaspora for Dexter Gordon.