Michel Colombier

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Originally posted by Alucard

some easy listening Fusion:

Michel Colombier : same 1979

Colombier scored more than one hundred feature and television films, worked with French chansonniers & was the musical director for Petula Clark among others. In the 70's he moved to LA and became friends with Herb Albert who produced Colombier's first Classic/Jazz/Pop fusion record "Wings" in 1975. A couple of years later the producer Denny Diante wanted to do a Fusion version of Vivaldi's 4 seasons and asked Colombier and Larry Carlton to do the record. Colombier refused and finally Carlton and Colombier each released a record (also Carlton played on Colombier's record). The record was to be instrumental and only some  titles still inspired by the 4 seasons. Colombier invited some musicians mainly from the JR field among them:
Herbie Hancock, Lee Ritenour, Jaco Pastorius, Pete Erskine, Michael Brecker, Aito Moreira, Steve Gadd, Tom Scott making it a JR dreamteam & the LSO strings and woodwinds. It's a nice record especially the up-tempo tracks, the arrangments are brillant & the musicainship is great.  Together with Deodato' one of the few arrangers who combine in an interesting way  jazz & classics. Not groundbreaking but an interesting listen.

On another jazz thread locally and recently, I mentioned the re-availability of Hubert Laws' The Chicago Theme (first release ~1972). Laws' record label back then, CTI Records, was quite well known for lifting from the serious music repertoire - indeed you have already cited one of their artists, Deodato. However,  Laws had several jazz albums with classic inclusion: including Dvorak (i.e. Going Home based on the 9th) and Bach. Later when Laws later moved to Columbia Records, he attacked  Tchiachovski's' Romeo & Juliette  (album had that title too - I heard the track for the first time on the smooth jazz channel on a PanAm flight into Boston in 1977 - which perhaps would indicate it to be one of Laws' safer recordings!!). Part of this use of classic themes was due to the influence of house arrangers for CTI Records,  Bob James and Don Sebeski.  Sebeski's own double album Giant Box included Vocalise (Rachmaninov) and a hybrid of Stravinski's FireBird with Mahavishnu's Birds Of Fire. 

But then too Modern Jazz Quartet issued in the early 70's, Blues On Bach, whilst the Dave Brubeck Quartet were strongly influenced by serious music from their very beginning (check out Dave Brubeck's Time Signatures box set) - DBQ's Blue Rondo Ala Turka (ex. Mozart) was further changed by Nice for Rondo.

Edited by Dick Heath - February 15 2008 at 12:24