Roger Kellaway Cello Quintet - Nostalgia Suite

180-gram gatefold LP and album CD

Each format recorded for this edition from the same master by K.K. Wong

Frammable original cover art print included

Taking his Cello Quartet idea into a different dimension, Roger Kellaway expanded it into a Quintet and wrote a six-part suite of pieces, and converted this group from something between and beyond categories to a more jazz-oriented band. Kellaway's unpredictably eclectic spirit is given free rein.

The Roger Kellaway Cello Quartet made two albums for the A & M label in 1971 and 1973, The group's name presented a puzzle to some people. It seemed to connote four celli. In fact it was a chamber group built around the sound of one cello, that of the brilliant Edgar Lustgarten, and featuring the virtuosic piano of Kellaway, the powerful and sensitive bass of Chuck Domanico, and the rich, coloristic percussion of Emil Richards. Kellaway wrote all the group's music.

"The idea," Roger says, "was for it to be a marriage of wood - cello, marimba, bass, and piano. Also, I wanted to prove that a band of that instrumentation had the flexibility to do anything. And I was afraid the drums would fill up the spaces between the instruments, which is why we didn't have a drummer."

But throughout the life of the Cello Quartet, Kellaway maintained a second group, a trio, whose purpose was (among other things) hard swinging. Kellaway was actually somewhat afraid of putting the two concepts together, but in time he began to feel a need to do so. And at this point, drummer and percussionist Joe Porcaro became a member of the group, thereby transforming it into the Cello Quintet. Joe is, in addition to being a fine jazz drummer, a symphony percussionist. He and Emil Richards are both natives of Hartford, Conn., and in fact went to high school together. Joe played with the Hartford Symphony. It is this background, Kellaway feels, that makes him so sensitive to the purposes and textures of the Cello Quartet — pardon, Quintet. "If the drummer can't hear the cello", Roger said, "then he's playing too loud. And Joe is simply perfect for this group."

 

1. Ungh!

2. Won't You Come and Feed Me

3. The Escalator As Applied To Anti-War

4. He Bluezd While She, In All Her Blessed Blather...Blushed

5. May I Interest You In A Little Recreation While You Sleep? They Whispered

6. Let's Cook It Right

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