Two Third Stream beasts here:
Joe Bonner - "Impressions of Copenhagen" - Impressions of Copenhagen (1981)
Even though they're strictly auxiliary percussion, the tubular bells are among my favorite instruments. I just love the timbre. When I was in gifted school, we played xylophones in music class the way other grade school kids played plastic recorders. Of course, I eventually went into public school and got to play those lovely things as well, but the point is that I developed a lifelong love for melodic percussion: vibes, glockenspiel, marimba, even the gamelan. When it was Choose Your Band Instrument Day in 4th grade, I wanted to play the vibes, but I was sad to find that that wasn't an option, and I would have to start on snare drum. Hitting a snare drum appealed to an eight-year-old Curious Hair about as much as a gaping head wound, so I took up the trumpet instead for the next ten years. Anyway, this has my beloved chimes around the edges, but mostly it's carried by Joe Bonner's terrific piano work and string arrangements. One of the youtube comments said it has a Mancini feel, and maybe it does a little, but I think this is a little too sophisticated to be Mancini, who always tended toward mass-appeal schmaltz, in my opinion.
Don Ellis - "Strawberry Soup" - Tears of Joy (1971)
I think the only other person who is familiar with drum and bugle corps here is Scorehead, and I doubt he's strolling by this thread, but this has become a standard of that particular medium. I don't know how; there's nothing standard about it. Weird time signatures, enormous instrumentation, and screaming trumpet solos from Don Ellis, who died far too young -- well before he pushed the trumpet and jazz as far as he could have. This one requires a time commitment, but I think it's worth it. I always wanted us to play this in jazz ensemble, but we were never going to round up as many bodies as it would have taken. Oh to have played that trumpet at solo at 8:30. God knows I practiced it.
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Molly Lambert wrote:
The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.
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