In 1968, the Gary Burton Quartet appeared at the Berlin Jazz Festival playing a synthesis of jazz and rock music. The Berlin jazz crowd were not convinced, but ex-pat American and vibist Dave Pike was, and immediately changed course to follow in Burton’s footsteps. Playing the Larry Coryell role in his quartet was Volker Kriegel, who immediately impressed. The band’s output on the MPS label is now highly collectable, but gradually the band seemed to run out of steam. But Kriegel didn’t. His own album on MPS, Spectrum, is a good example of early jazz-rock. The former student who had studied with Theodor Adorno subsequently tried to cram as much as he could into a lifetime – as a film director, author of music books, cartoonist for the national German press and founder of the United Jazz + Rock Ensemble, probably his greatest achievement. His two concerts in Lagos in 1979 with his Mild Maniac Orchestra, a well intentioned jazz-rock ensemble, never quite engages gear with long numbers failing to find focus. Not so his 1990 concert in Bochum with his regular band, a hard-blowing in-yer-face ensemble that took delight in annoying the purists. Throughout, Kriegel acquits himself as a guitarist of poise and invention, a loss to the German jazz scene in 2003 at the age of 60.