Winter Park, FL's Porter Records is the imprint that reintroduced America to Finnish jazz great Heikki Sarmanto. The label does it again with this gorgeous deluxe reissue of Byard Lancaster's long-gone classic Live at Macalester College, which was originally released on his tiny Dogtown label in 1972. This set is making its first appearance CD and contains an extra 25 minutes of music recorded in Boston in 1973 by the J.R. Mitchell Experimental Unit. The late Mitchell was a drummer and educator at various institutions, including Temple University. He and Lancaster had been close friends and collaborators since the 1950s; he is the drummer on all the music here. This is an incredible document of post-Coltrane free jazz that contains music from three performances with three different bands over three years. The opener, 1324, was recorded in Boston in 1970; it features Lancaster on soprano sax and trumpet (!), Mitchell, upright bassistCalvin Hill, electric bassist Paul Morrison, and conguero Lester Lumley. It's a 16-minute workout where Lancaster uses the same visionary improvisational abilities he displayed with Sunny Murray in 1966, but developed to an instinctual level. His soloing is pure snaky delight, moving through Near and Far Eastern scales, modal jazz, and free blowing. Mitchell's drumming flows like lava, offering harsh rim-shot accents, rolling tom-toms, and chant-like bass drum steadiness, allowing Lancaster and both bassists an open center for interplay.

1		1324
2		Last Summer
3		War World
4		Live At Macalester
5		World In Me
6		Thought

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