Wheeler once told me that the Angel Song album took shape out of a series of discussions he had with ECM producer Manfred Eicher. Expressing a desire to record with Lee Konitz, whom he had first seen as a member of the Claude Thornhill Orchestra in the late 1940s, Eicher suggested a trio with Dave Holland, “Which I agreed to,” said Wheeler, “But on thinking about it, as I am a bit harmonically orientated, I felt it would be difficult to sustain a whole album without any harmony.”

Wheeler suggested John Abercrombie, Eicher suggested Frisell, and it is the latter who appears on this double album. However, Frisell was unable to make Wheeler’s major Arts Council tour of the UK with the Angel Song band in 1998, so he asked Abercrombie to step in. In the event, both, in their own uniquely individual ways, were a perfect fit for Wheeler’s music.

As a collaboration with the enigmatic Lee Konitz, Angel Song was an unqualified success, as this is the alto saxophonist as earnest and willing collaborator; later in life, he was a somewhat irascible one-take artist who was rather circumspect about performing new material.

Here he works well with Wheeler, helping make this an important album in both players’ latter day discographies. All nine compositions were by the trumpeter, presenting an opportunity to immerse one’s self in his music with their wonderful ad hoc structures, a fascination in themselves.

The redesigned packaging of the Luminescence series presents the recordings inside the handsome gatefold pack, not in the gatefold sleeves themselves. You can get them in, but it’s a very fiddly job. The vinyl is of better quality and weight than the original release, and the sound is perfect, as befits creativity of such high quality.