Sam Rivers Trio - live in Foggia 30 April 1980

This is a repost of sorts of a file posted way back on this blog. In the comments section to the original post, Rick Lopez made the very valid point that Sam's scat singing towards the end didn't sound, shall we say, entirely authentic. So I ran it through Audacity to see if anything could be done about it. I made two versions, one with 15 percent speed reduction and one with 20 percent. Listening back, the 20 percent sounded a bit soggy, so I decided to stick with the 15 percent. In other words, this runs at about 85 percent of the original speed. I can't say if I have hit the nail right on the head, but at least it comes off more plausible, and in any case, your ears are the best judge. One more technical note, this was originally posted as a high grade mp3 and is reposted in the flac format to prevent further lossiness.

What we have here is a live concert in Foggia, Italy, on 30 April 1980 with Sam Rivers on multiple instruments and vocals, Dave Holland on bass and Steve Ellington on drums. As for the gig, it's marvellous, really a stayer, one to come back to. Sam Rivers starts out on tenor, switches to soprano, continues on flute interspersed with a bit of vocalising towards the end. In all, the piece runs for 78:28, so one consequence of lowering the speed is you get at least ten minutes extra of Sam and the gang. Can't be bad, eh?