Trumpeter Mark Harvey was part of the consciously spiritual wing of the jazz avant-garde that emerged in the 1960s. A Methodist minister as well as a musician, Harvey eventually formed the acclaimed Aardvark Jazz Orchestra but in 1971, when he recorded A Rite for All Souls, he belonged to a quartet that performed at his parish, Boston’s historic Old West Church. This previously unreleased live recording captures two-discs worth of improvisation organized almost liturgically and in two acts. Disc one ends where the intermission began. A Rite for All Souls was recorded on Oct. 31, All Souls Night, and includes a plea against a death society of “aimless executions and slaughtering”—a kind of countercultural exorcism.
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