tenor1

And now Haiku has been released on Promising Music! Finally, every Don Ellis album commercially released on LP has made the transition to CD. Haiku is a sort of proto-new-agey trumpet plus strings album. It's not the place to start with Don's music, but fans should grab it while you can!

Soaring and Haiku are studio albums released in 1973. Soaring is a big band album that continues in a similar vein from Tears of Joy, heading toward the later style of Live at Montreux. If you like either of those two albums, you will very likely enjoy this one. Similarly, if you don't like those two albums, you probably won't like this one either. Soaring is way better than the very commercial big band studio albums that preceded and followed it (Connection and Star Wars). Haiku is a Don Ellis with strings album, definitely different than his other work and one that fans of the orchestra may or may not like. But you can't get that on CD yet - it's just Soaring that is available now.

Don Ellis's "Soaring" album on MPS has finally been re-issued on CD as part of Verve's Jazz Club series based in Germany. I just ordered my copy from Amazon. Apparently if this sells well, we may even see "Haiku" next!