Alexander Schlippenbach Quartet: Das Hohe Lied

 "About the time we decided to put our trio performance from Pisa out on record ("Detto Fra Di Noi"), Alex had arranged with FMP headmaster Jost Gebers the concert dates for a live quartet record.  We played on two nights altogether five pieces.  When during the following summer all of us toured with the Globe Unity Orchestra, we took along on cassette a rough-mix of the material.  After listening to it individually on the bandbus, we heard the whole lot together in the listening room of Alan's school in Paris.  There turned out to be more good stuff than we needed for one LP, so we left it at that, waiting to speak with Jost for a final decision.  He had meanwhile been checking the original tapes again and found enough technical faults (off-mike recording and mike drop-outs) to make him reject those masters.  New dates were arranged tot he same year, concerts were played and recorded, and from this new material the quartet's "Anticlockwise" album was produced.  For this we all went to Berlin for the definite mix, and as we still thought highly of the music of the original date, we asked for the old mastertapes to be given to us; but having been discarded as unusable, they had been erased!  I kept the rough-mix cassettes and after listening to them again and again, I knew: the music had to be on a Po Torch record.  What I chose is the first long piece from the first night (A + B) and the two short sets of the second (C and D).  Masters were made from the cassettes using a bit of equalization, faults remained uncorrected.  By and by, ideas for the sleeve took shape, the name came, the titles of the pieces--taken from Robert Graves' translation of Solomon's poem...
It has taken a long time; so now: listen!  to hear these excerpts from the Song of Songs."

Alexander von Schlippenbach, piano
Evan Parker, soprano and tenor saxophone
Alan Silva, doublebass
Paul Lovens selected drums and cymbals, Singende Sage, zither

Played live on November 6th and 8th 1981 at the Quartier Latin, Berlin
Front painting by Herbert Bardenheuer
Inside painting by Astrid Bardenheuer
1991 Po Torch records

Ripped at 320:

http://www.mediafire.com/?qd9ltnl1wpep7gs