Bennie Maupin – ‘The Jewel in the Lotus’

Another overlooked 70s classic remastered from the original tapes and returned to vinyl, this time as part of ECM’s audiophile Luminessence strand. The Jewel in the Lotus is a remarkable, Buddhist-inspired suite of original pieces composed by the saxophonist and flautist Bennie Maupin, well-known for his work with Miles Davis (from ‘Bitches Brew’ to ‘On the Corner’ and beyond) and Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi and Head Hunters groups.

Despite these affiliations, the album conforms to no one’s idea of what a fusion album is supposed to sound like, abjuring funk or rock-styled grooves – and even conventional solos – in favour of impressionistic, superbly orchestrated and vividly atmospheric tone-poems. The overall effect is to conjure up a strange and occasionally rather frightening sound-world that moves easily from limpid ecstasy to banging Sturm und Drang. If there’s anything to compare it to, I’d offer Joe Zawinul’s superb 1971 album ‘Zawinul’ on Atlantic, whose serious, Third Stream-adjacent compositions were given a sometimes similar tone-poem spin through mysterious-sounding woodwind harmonies twinned with jangling percussion and thrumming double bass, all of which are present and correct on ’The Jewel in the Lotus’. And, of course, Herbie Hancock appears on both. Another notable influence is the trumpeter Marion Brown’s unusual ECM recording from 1970, ‘Afternoon of a Georgia Faun’, on which Maupin played.

But just look at the band for ’The Jewel in the Lotus’ – recorded at New York City’s Record Plant in March 1974 – and then when listening marvel at how Maupin uses their various musical combinations and potential, showing how deeply thought-out the whole process of preparation must have been. Hancock plays both piano and electric piano and he plays a lot, sounding absolutely focused. Percussion duties are shared by drummers Billy Hart and Frederick Waits (who also plays marimba), and the regular Hancock associate Bill Summers, who is credited with “percussion and water-filled garbage can”. Maupin, who plays as much flute as sax, is credited with “reeds, voice and glockenspiel”, and Charles Sullivan adds trumpet to two of the eight tracks. Holding everything down with huge gravity is double-bassist Buster Williams, like Maupin and Hancock another convert to Nichiren Buddhism, who first introduced the others to the practice.

It’s all startlingly good, transcendently so in fact. Some pieces, such as the opening ‘Ensenado’, where Buster’s Williams’ pedal-figure bass is partnered by gentle percussion and pitter-pattering marimba before the entry of Maupin’s ethereal flute and sax harmonies, are simply out-there: all-time classics and as contemporary-sounding as almost anything else I can think of, from 1974 to now.

Bennie Maupin helped to mix the album with Manfred Eicher and Jan Erik Kongshaug at the Bendiksen studio in Oslo, so the input of his creative vision was there from first to last. What an achievement it continues to be. And what a golden age of adventurous jazz it was. Let’s hope Luminessence gets around to Julian Priester’s ‘Pepo Mtoto’ from 1973, too. That’s another contemporary-sounding blast from the past, and as Afro-Futurist as Maupin was ambient.

The Jewel in the Lotus is released on ECM Luminessence vinyl today, 16 May 2025

from https://ukjazznews.com