Included are a big-band record by the saxophonist David Murray; a quartet recording, featuring Don Pullen on organ, by Mr. Murray; a terrific piano trio album by Harold Mabern, and an album by the Art Ensemble of Chicago, featuring the pianist Cecil Taylor.
As its title indicates, Transition was a bridge between classic quartet recordings like A Love Supreme and the more experimental works of Coltrane's last years.
Allmusic awarded the album 4 stars with its review by Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr. stating, "the quartet recordings on Last From Lennie's are bursting with creative energy... Like all good vault releases, Last From Lennie's reminds listeners of just how good Byard and his bandmates were".
It is to America's shame that the quartet recordings that spawned so much of our music have virtually no outlet today, despite their instant accessibility and undeniable power.
Of the quartet recording, "ein grosses Thema des Albums auch in musikalischer Hinsicht ist das Überschreiten von Grenzen und das Hinterfragen der eigenen Werturteile"("a large theme of the album, also in a musical respect, is the transcending of borders and the questioning of our own value judgements").
Miles Davis, Kenny Dorham, Lee Morgan, and more recently Wynton Marsalis have made memorable quartet recordings, but these have largely been anomalies in the context of their overall careers; almost all of their recordings were made with larger groups.
She is most notable for her work and recordings with her Quintessence ensemble as well as for several trio and quartet recordings, and for her New Yor-Uba ensemble featuring Orlando 'Puntilla' Rios (although unrecorded), an Afro-Cuban jazz big band since the early 1980s.
If the tenor is the quarterback, the baritone can seem doomed to be a bulky linesman - but on those quartet recordings Mulligan plays all the positions.
Steve and Cindy also collaborated with Anne Hills and Michael Smith on a quartet recording of story-songs, Fourtold (Appleseed Records, 2003).
Concert recordings from that tour ended up on the 1971 double album Four Way Street; years would pass between subsequent trio and quartet recordings.