Eric Dolphy, artwork by Michael Symonds
Summer 1963. Manhattan. Avant-garde composer John Cage is performing his Variations III, in which individually amplified Slinkies suspended above the stage go BOING-BOING. Great stuff. Anyhow, during intermission, whom do we meet in the audience but Eric Dolphy! Introducing ourselves, we tell him how much we admire his work and ask whether Cage's sonic experiments might apply to jazz. "I don't know," Eric replied. "But I like what I'm hearing." The next year, his atonal tribute to Italian avant-garde flutist Severino Gazzelloni reinforced our wonder at the borderless map of Eric Dolphy's imagination adventurous, uncompromising and, for listeners, relentlessly rewarding.