Search - Live: Royal Festival hall on DVD

Genre Defying Music

Graveyard Poet | St. Louis, MO USA | 02/12/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"David Axelrod is a legend, a producer and engineer on the sessions of so many jazz artists of the 1960s and an eccentric genius whose genre-defying solo albums embody and exemplify the dreams, creativity, risk taking, and experimentation of that heady era more than anyone else. It is genre defying music: classical grandeur, jazz improvisation, funky grooves, psychedelic atmosphere, and the moods and textures found in the greatest film scores.

Dana Axelrod, David Axelrod's son, knew that his father's music was "must hear" and needed to be seen and listened to in a proper live setting. After years of working towards this moment, the concert at Royal Festival Hall in London finally resulted. Dana Axelrod captures an extraordinary experience that was overdue and a long time coming--you can feel the excitement of the high caliber musicians performing his father's compositions and his father conducting his work for the first time in a generation.

The set of tracks picked couldn't have been more perfect--the landmark Cannonball Adderley collaboration "Tensity", the now instantly recognizable "The Edge", some re-imaginings of "Paint It Black" and "Norwegian Wood" that travel in much more intriguing and engaging directions than the original songs, and, of course, the standout cuts from The Axe's genre-defying masterpieces, which are true hidden gems of the 1960s--Songs of Innocence and Experience.

Highly Recommended for the collection of any serious music lover."