Album: Marching Song, Vols. 1-2

Song Title

Time

Hooray!

Landscape

Waltz

Landscape (II)

Other World

Marching Song

Transition

Home

Rosie

Prelude

Tension

Introduction

Ballad

Conflict

Requiem

10)

Tarnished

11)

Memorial

Album: Marching Song, Vols. 1-2

Song Title

Time

Hooray!

Landscape

Waltz

Landscape (II)

Other World

Marching Song

Transition

Home

Rosie

Prelude

Tension

Introduction

Ballad

Conflict

Requiem

10)

Tarnished

11)

Memorial

Performer Notes

Personnel: Mike Westbrook (piano); Mike Osborne (flute, piccolo, alto saxophone); Alan Skidmore (flute, saxophone, tenor saxophone); John Warren (flute, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone); John Surman (saxophone, soprano saxophone, baritone saxophone); Brian Cockburn Smith (tenor saxophone); Dave Holdsworth, Dave Holdsworth, Kenny Wheeler (trumpet, flugelhorn); Greg Bowen, Tony Fisher , Ronnie Hughes, Henry Lowther (trumpet); Eddie Harvey, Mike Gibbs, Paul Rutherford, Malcolm Griffiths (trombone); Martin Fry (tuba); John Marshall , Alan Jackson (drums).
Liner Note Author: Dave Henderson.
As a two-part work that taken together was an instrumental commentary on the origination and folly of war, Mike Westbrook's albums of "marching songs" are considered both a high point in his career and a high point in progressive British jazz of the late 1960s in general. This CD reissue sensibly combines both LPs (originally issued separately, and simultaneously, as MARCHING SONG VOL. 1 and MARCHING SONG VOL. 2) into one package. There's no shortage of quite out-there sections, with the several-dozen strong cast of players--including such standout names as Kenny Wheeler on trumpet and flugelhorn, Barre Philips on bass, and John Marshall on drums--guaranteeing depth and richness to the arrangements. If it's consciously studied as a concept work, it's not so much an anti-war protest (although that sentiment's certainly implied by some of it) as a reflection of war's many moods and stages, from gung-ho patriotism to between-battle ennui and post-conflict exhaustion.

Professional Reviews

Record Collector (magazine) (p.96) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Assembling some two-dozen key session players, he delivered obliquely orchestrated music that represented the light and shade, peaks and troughs of conflict."