Interview with Mark Harvey and Peter H. Bloom spotlights long-lost recording, A Rite for All Souls

SOMERVILLE, Mass. - Aug. 28, 2020 - PRLog -- Veteran jazz writer Bob Blumenthal hosted a wide-ranging Zoom interview in early August, with Mark Harvey and Peter H. Bloom, as the long-time colleagues discussed A Rite for All Souls, a 2-CD set with illustrated booklet just out on Americas Musicworks.  The album presents a newly discovered recording of a 1971 concert by The Mark Harvey Group (Harvey on brasswinds; Bloom on woodwinds; and their late colleagues Craig Ellis and Michael Standish, percussion).

A Rite for All Souls has been hailed by music critics in the U.S. and abroad.  "This music of bracing power was born of an alertness and sensitivity to prevailing musical currents, and offered its own strikingly original point of view on the free jazz revolution….the four players proved adept at blending and overlapping their sounds into an intricately stitched together ensemble music – churning percussion providing a magic carpet which lifts the players toward the heavens." (Philip Clark, The Wire).

The recording has been called "extraordinary…strange and wonderful…cosmically unusual" (The New York City Jazz Record), "a beacon to current minds" (Jazz Ese Ruido, Spain), and "a beautiful musical and historical document" (MusicZoom, Italy).

Jon Ross (Ear Relevant) wrote, "The new album from The Mark Harvey Group, A Rite for All Souls (Americas Musicworks), captures a seminal live show from 1971….an indelible recording that characterizes the immediacy of free-jazz protest music at a consequential time in American history."

The Mark Harvey Group toured the East Coast in the early 1970s and appeared twice at the All-Nite Soul Concerts at Saint Peter's Church in New York City (the celebrated "jazz church"), on shared bills with Clark Terry, Rashid Ali, Roswell Budd, Billy Taylor and other luminaries.  Boston performances featured such notables as Ran Blake, Jaki Byard, Ricky Ford, and Phil Wilson.  In subsequent decades, the ensemble played as The Mark Harvey Group, the New American Music Ensemble, and the Aardett, featuring stellar improvisers, with Mark Harvey and Peter H. Bloom as the core.

A video of the August 9 Zoom event is now available on YouTube here:
https://youtu.be/BIDzwRvCQSo



For more information and to buy CDs: Americas Musicworks, manager for The Mark Harvey Group. Rebecca DeLamotte, managing director, http://www.americasmusicworks.com/mark-harvey-group.html