Eternity

Within the first 30 seconds of the opening track on 's final studio album , the listener encounters the complete palette of 's musical thought. As her organ careens through a series of arpeggiated modal drones, they appear seemingly rootless, hanging out in the cosmic eternal. And they remain there ever so briefly until an entire orchestra chimes in behind her in a straight that places her wondrously jagged soloing within the context of a universal everything -- at least musically -- in that she moves through , Indian music, , 12-tone music, and the of . This is the historical and spiritual context made her own, the ability to open up her own sonic vocabulary and seamlessly enter it into an ensemble context for an untold, unpredictable expression of harmonic convergence. While many other players have picked up on it since, 's gorgeous arrangements and canny musical juxtapositions never seem forced or pushed beyond the margins. Perhaps, as evidenced by and the suite, it's because already dwells on the fringes both musically and spiritually, where boundaries dissolve and where everything is already inseparable. But this does not keep her music from being strikingly, even stunningly beautiful -- check out the killer Afro-Cuban percussion under her soloing on which is rooted in a harmonically complex, diatonic series of whole tones. In numerous settings from orchestra to trio, finds the unspeakable and plays it. Nowhere is this more evident than in from 's which closes the album. Her faithfulness to the material with a complete orchestra under her control is one of shimmering transcendence that places the composer's work firmly in the context of . Her control over the orchestra is masterful, and her reading of the section's nuances and subtleties rivals virtually everyone who's ever recorded it. is ultimately about the universality of tonal language and its complex expressions. It is an enduring recording that was far ahead of its time in 1976 and is only now getting the recognition it deserves. [ reissued the CD in 2002.] ~ Thom Jurek