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The Jewel in the Lotus (album)

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1974 studio album by Bennie Maupin
The Jewel in the Lotus
Studio album by Bennie Maupin
Released1974
RecordedMarch 1974
StudioRecord Plant
New York City
Genre
Length44:17
LabelECM 1043 ST
ProducerManfred Eicher
Bennie Maupin chronology
The Jewel in the Lotus
(1974) 		Slow Traffic to the Right
(1977)

The Jewel in the Lotus is the debut album by jazz woodwind player Bennie Maupin, recorded in March 1974 and released on ECM later that year. The sextet's rhythm section consists of pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Buster Williams and percussionists Billy Hart, Freddie Waits and Bill Summers, with guest appearances from trumpeter Charles Sullivan. The title is a translation of the Buddhist mantra Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ (Devanagari: ॐ मणि पद्मे हूँ).

Background

In 2011, Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer used samples of The Jewel in the Lotus as the basis for the track "Rensenada" on the remix album Re:ECM.

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic
Pitchfork9.1/10
The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings
The Guardian
All About Jazz

The editors of AllMusic awarded the album a full five stars. Thom Jurek called it "a true jazz classic," and wrote: "The true worth of Jewel in the Lotus is that perhaps no other bandleader at the time could bring together players from such different backgrounds and relationships to his own musical development and make them interact with one another with material that is scored so closely and whose dynamics and tensions are so pronounced and steady... This album sounds as timeless and adventurous in the present as the day it was released."

The authors of The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings described the album as "a record that steals into the room and leaves again without introductions, but without attempting to be pointlessly enigmatic."

In a review for Pitchfork, Shuja Haider stated: "Though Bennie Maupin is listed as the leader, The Jewel in the Lotus defies assumptions about the hierarchy of musical composition and performance... Even when an individual speaks alone, it suggests, the collective listens together, and there is no higher calling than accompanying others."

The Guardian's John Fordham commented: "The rich soundscapes of Bitches Brew and early Weather Report are strong references, with Maupin far more of an enabler and a colourist than a flat-out soloist. But his rich tapestries are more acoustic than most early 1970s fusion... and this is an absorbing collage of long flute sounds over marimba vamps and loosely impressionistic percussion, water-churning noises and electric keys washing around brooding bass clarinet lines, airy soprano melodies over Buster Williams' bowed bass."

John Kelman, writing for All About Jazz, called the album "a masterpiece," and remarked: "Maupin's writing is often marked by richly distinctive lyricism, but it's the ongoing interplay of this sextet/septet that makes the album so remarkable. Like the attention to space paid by the three percussionists, there's a gossamer-like ethereality to these extraordinarily multi-directional conversations."

Brian Payne of Jazz Journal wrote: "This is a strange and at times haunting album. It's invariably wistful and is a classic example of 1970s spiritual jazz."

Track listing

All compositions by Bennie Maupin

  1. "Ensenada" – 8:15
  2. "Mappo" – 8:30
  3. "Excursion" – 4:52
  4. "Past + Present = Future" – 1:52
  5. "The Jewel in the Lotus" – 10:02
  6. "Winds of Change" – 1:30
  7. "Song for Tracie Dixon Summers" – 5:19
  8. "Past Is Past" – 3:57

Personnel

References

  1. ^ Jurek, Thom. "The Jewel in the Lotus". Allmusic.
  2. ^ Haider, Shuja (April 28, 2019). "Bennie Maupin: The Jewel in the Lotus". Pitchfork. Retrieved April 28, 2019.
  3. Swenson, J., ed. (1985). The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide. USA: Random House/Rolling Stone. p. 133. ISBN 0-394-72643-X.
  4. ^ Cook, Richard; Morton, Brian (2008). The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings (9th ed.). Penguin. p. 963. ISBN 978-0-141-03401-0.
  5. ^ Fordham, John (September 6, 2007). "Bennie Maupin, The Jewel in the Lotus". The Guardian. Retrieved September 20, 2022.
  6. ^ Kelman, John (October 31, 2007). "Bennie Maupin: The Jewel In The Lotus". All About Jazz. Retrieved September 20, 2022.
  7. Payne, Brian (September 25, 2019). "Bennie Maupin: The Jewel In The Lotus". Jazz Journal. Retrieved September 20, 2022.
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