In the early 1970s, as recording opportunities for more adventurous hard-bop musicians dried up, trumpeter Charles Tolliver and pianist Stanley Cowell started their own label, Strata East, partly in order to document the activities of their quartet Music Inc. The aesthetic results were in some ways an extension of the music Tolliver had made in the 1960s with artists such as Jackie McLean, Max Roach, and Andrew Hill.
On this edition of Night Lights we‘ll hear live performances by the Tolliver quartet from Slug‘s Saloon in New York City and from a concert in Tokyo, as well as recordings the quartet made augmented by a big band. Many of these recordings are available in a collection from Mosaic Records.
