Open Mind

Description

If the album Individual Choice (1983) by Jean Luc Ponty was the symbol of his decision to take his music in a new direction, Open Mind, released a year later, is a deeper exploration of the emerging world of synths as well as their impact on studio and live performances in general. Through this album and its predecessors, Jean Luc Ponty shows in various ways how modern music is now created. The legendary drummer Kenny Clarke compared Jean-Luc Ponty to Dizzy Gillespie. His fellow violinist Stuff Smith marveled: "He plays the violin like Coltrane plays the saxophone." Born in 1942, French violinist Jean-Luc Ponty brought the jazz violin into the world of modern jazz. At Frank Zappa's request, Ponty moved to the United States in 1970. Over the following years, he toured with Zappa, the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Chick Corea's "Return to Forever." If Ponty's 1983 album, Individual Choice, was the sketchbook of his decision to take his music in a new direction, Open Mind (1984), released the following year, was a deeper exploration of the emerging world of synthesizers and sequencers and their impact on live and studio performance. Here, complex rhythmic patterns move into the background while new sounds appear and disappear on the surface in colorful bursts, and exceptional jazz improvisers create familiar music in new contexts. It is almost an audio version of a kinetic wind sculpture. Ponty chose to use a Roland drum machine instead of simulating real drum and percussion sounds and played all the keyboard parts himself in order to further explore the concept he had introduced on Individual Choice. He also asked two longtime friends to solo on different tracks: George Benson, whom JLP had met and played with at 21, and Chick Corea, who excels on two tracks with his Moog synthesizer. Open Mind has been remastered by 2023 Grammy nominee Christoph Stickeland and includes new liner notes.