Albert Mangelsdorff Quartet – Never Let It End (MPS, 1970)

Albert Mangelsdorff (tb); Heinz Sauer (ts, as); Günter Lenz (b); Ralf Hübner (d)

Recorded on March 23, 1970

The Albert Mangelsdorff Quartet had been performing together for nearly a decade when they made Never Let It End.  Initially formed in 1961 as a quintet, wikipedia refers to the group as "one of the most celebrated European bands of the 1960s."  (The group became a quartet when alto & baritone saxophonist Günter Kronberg left the band at the end of the decade.)  Perhaps the quintet's most well-known recording, Now Jazz Ramwong (CBS Germany/Pacific Jazz, 1964), anticipates the rising tide of musicians who were melding jazz with far-flung musical elements.  Recorded after a tour of the Far East, the recording combines Thai, Indian, and medieval German musical sounds with jazz.

Jumping ahead to 1970, Mangelsdorff's quartet recorded Never Let It End in Frankfurt on March 23, just days after the 12th Annual Jazz Festival in the same city.  (Incidentally, this was the same festival where Phil Woods & His European Rhythm Machine had just recorded an album for Embryo/Atlantic, as described in my previous post.)  Joachim Berendt's liner notes describe how the album came to be titled Never Let It End:

"How far I might think back -- I can't remember ever having experienced such a euphoric feeling at a recording session; and with euphoria I mean the simultaneousness of ecstasy and precision, of exuberance and consciousness.  'Never let it end,' said Albert Mangelsdorff as we were listening to the tape. And with this we had not only the title for a piece, but for the whole record, and the common denominator for the atmosphere in which it was recorded." 

With the passing of fifty years, it's strange to read in the liner notes about how this LP represents the "freest music" that Mangelsdorff had yet made. It's strange because the music would soon be going much further out. And, for listeners coming to this music today, it's hardly the forbidding challenge that it must have presented to listeners in 1970. 

An old adage states that jazz groups often make their finest recordings just before breaking up.  That proved to be the case here, as the quartet disbanded in 1971. 

More Albert Mangelsdorff
Later in the survey, we will re-encounter Mangelsdorff co-leading another album.  Aside from that as yet unrevealed LP, listeners who enjoy this record might want to explore Mangelsdorff's unique, solo trombone recordings – like Trombirds (MPS, 1973) or Tromboneliness (MPS, 1977).  His ability to produce innovative and otherworldly sounds on his instrument (using multiphonic techniques that he pioneered) is on full display on these records.  A trio LP with Elvin Jones and Palle Danielsson, The Wide Point (MPS, 1975), is also very fine.