One of Ted Gioia’s most interesting articles in his Honest Broker substack posts is a piece he did on arts and culture that claimed the word beauty had the most potential for disruption and transgression in the whole cultural hierarchy. It is the closest thing to anarchy and liberation because more and more, people are seeking direct, artistic experiences with the creative work unmediated by corporate gatekeepers or institutional domination and beyond their control, it reduces their authority and power.

So let’s stick it out there – Epiphany is an album of great beauty. It breaks all the rules about jazz and strings being odd bedfellows, about the primacy of the visceral experience promised by jazz; it doesn’t always swing, shows the arranger/composer as much a creative force as the improvisor and so on. It’s a remarkable series of compositions – eight in all – of music from a master of jazz and orchestral styles that has integrated jazz soloists into the orchestral colours of a symphony orchestra – including Joe Lovano on ‘Ambivalence,’ Michael Brecker on the more consciously jazz- slanted ‘Barcelona’ and Kenny Wheeler and John Taylor on ‘Sanctus’ that climaxes the suite – that is creates its own musical space. It’s beautiful, its reality so clear you hear it.