For those unaware, Mark Masters explores the wide-ranging compositions of spiritual jazz legend Billy Harper on Dance, Eternal Spirits, Dance! (out June 6th, 2025 via Capri Records).

The recording features ingenious new arrangements for different configurations of the Mark Masters Ensemble, graced by the breathtaking solo work of Billy Harper as well as longtime collaborator Tim Hagans - whose trumpet makes up part of the 17-piece Ensemble. The band also includes Francesca Tanksley on piano, a continuation of her more than 35-year collaboration with Harper.

Billy Harper is a longtime hero of mine, says Masters, who first invited the tenor great to guest on his 1990 album Priestess, which also featured trombonist and Charles Mingus sideman Jimmy Knepper. Billy is a very gifted composer whose music is singular, and I also love his playing.

Approaching Harper’s own music for Dance, Eternal Spirits, Dance!, Masters surveyed a broader swath of the composer’s career, culling material from a nearly 30-year span from 1972 to 2000. Billy is a very melodic composer, Masters says. Each of his compositions is so different from the others, and that’s one of the many interesting things about his music. He doesn’t compose from a formula, so each of his tunes has a very distinct personality.

1. Was It Here...Is It There?
2. The One Who Could Make The Rain Stop
3. Croquet Ballet
4. If One Could Only See
5. Dance, Eternal Spirits, Dance!
6. The Seventh Day
7. Insight
8. Credence

This delightfully-ambient new recording opens on the intensified Was It Here...Is It There? and then brings us the impeccably eloquent The One Who Could Make The Rain Stop, the impressive Croquet Ballet and then comes the dutifully-sculpted ballad If One Could Only See.

We are then brought forth the creatively perceptive title cut Dance, Eternal Spirits, Dance! which is itself backed seamlessly by the resourcefully quick-witted The Seventh Day, the set rounding out on the profoundly keen Insight, coming to a close on the refined Credence.

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