Trilok Gurtu - Spellbound

2019 release.

Two short snippets recorded live by and with Don Cherry bookend the album “Spellbound”: a 33-second improvisation in a duo with Cherry on trumpet and Trilok Gurtu, who can be heard on the drum set especially converted and modified for his needs, forms the start of the new CD by the Indian percussionist, while a brief “Thank you, thank you very much” from Cherry for the applause of the audience closes the album.

Even though the other pieces on “Spellbound” contain no other recordings with this jazz legend, who died in Malaga in Spain in 1995, every single sound on the CD is an expression of Trilok Gurtu's great admiration for the man and musician Don Cherry. After all, it was the American trumpeter who, in the first half of the 1970s, encouraged the young percussionist, freshly arrived in Europe, i.e. Italy, from his homeland of India, to pursue his vision of an intuitive music which is open to the world and embraces the world, and to realise this vision.