Harold Budd and Marion Brown recorded this piece twice:
- in 1975 on Brown’s album “Vista”
- and in 1976 on Budd’s “The Pavilion of Dreams”.
Both are unashamedly sumptuously beautiful, and I often listen to one version followed by the other.
This composition by Harold Budd feels directly related to Coltrane’s “After The Rain” and “Welcome”. It pushes the floating quality of those works to the maximum, using multiple keyboards and percussion.
On Budd’s there’s electric piano, celeste, harp, glockenspiel and four marimbas.
On Brown’s version there are two celestes, Fender Rhodes, piano, bells and gongs.
It conjures up a blissed-out space, saved from New Age blandness by the arrangements and Marion Brown’s deep phrasing.
In the notes to his album “Porto Nova” Brown says “My reference is the blues and that’s where my music comes from. I do listen to music of other cultures… I don’t have to borrow from them … B. B. King is my Ravi Shankar.”
“The Pavillion of Dreams” came out in 1978, the final in Brian Eno’s “Obscure Records” series.
“Vista” is the fourth of Marion Brown’s albums for impulse, following the great “Geechee Recollections” and “Sweet Earth Flying”.