Modern Sound Quintet - Otinku

Perhaps the first time that steelpan is featured on an album as a jazz instrument in Europe, ‘Otinku’ is an important, groundbreaking jazz album that offers a mix of Caribbean and African roots with jazz and pan. The Modern Sound Quintet’s leader Rudy ‘Two Left’ Smith grew up in Port of Spain, Trinidad in the Caribbean and has had an illustrious career as a pannist - having traveled with one of the first steelbands to perform all over Europe which then morphs into a jazz ensemble. He has continued to be a leading jazz pannist performing all over the world and recorded extensively.

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The Modern Sound Quintet recorded ‘Otinku’ for EMI Finland. The album mixed originals and covers of both long time jazz standards and recent jazz hits. The title track offers the strongest African element Kofi Ayivor chanting and Rudy Smith trying to give the pans a balafon quality to its sound in that piece. They choose two jazz standards to work through. Bye Bye Blackbird is a song from 1926 sung by crooners like Gene Austin. Didn’t take off as a jazz standard until it was recorded in 1956 by Miles Davis. The other song from the 1920s, Softly As In A Morning Sunrise written for an operetta at the time had been picked up by jazz artists from Artie Shaw to Miles Davis, Milt Jackson to John Coltrane and many others. – Bandcamp