By this point in the brief, decade-long career of Gary McFarland (1933-71), the gifted composer and arranger easily balanced light and breezy (even poppy) music with the serious and somber (quasi-classical, or what was then called the Third Stream). As the title of this record more than suggests, The October Suite is considerably more of the latter and absolutely none of the former.
If The Gary McFarland Orchestra – Special Guest Soloist: Bill Evans (1963), which this record somewhat resembles, is more of a springtime lark through the park, The October Suite reflects something different, almost oppositional: more of an autumnal feeling of sadness and loss. This resignation – even hopelessness – started to begin creeping into McFarland’s music, beginning with this album, and reaching right through his final outing, Butterscotch Rum (1971).
Even though McFarland was no stranger to Third Stream music – the meeting of classical structures with jazz interpolations – this was a new twist to his music (compare with either Orchestra U.S.A. [1963] or Modern Jazz Quartet pianist John Lewis’ all-McFarland program Essence [recorded 1960-62, released 1964] for evidence).
For the occasion, Impulse Records, as if to mark its first foray into this sort of music, launched what it called “The Virtuoso Series” to inaugurate The October Suite. By 1967, however, Third Stream music, which was never very popular in the first place, was largely fizzling out and the Kuhn/McFarland record turned out to be the only record in the series.
Recorded over two sessions on October 14 and November 1, 1966 – while McFarland was working on his score for the film “13,” later released as “Eye of the Devil” – The October Suite is not really a suite at all. Two of the tracks here (“One I Could Have Loved,” “Childhood Dreams”) come from the “13” score. Like the Bill Evans set, it is a soloist largely improvising in a chamber-jazz setting over a set of McFarland’s charts.
The first session here finds the pianist paired with a string quartet (on side one), while the second finds him with four woodwinds and a harp, an instrument that factors significantly on the “13” score. Both sessions include Ron Carter on bass and, in one of his earliest recordings, Marty Morell on drums (Morell would join the Bill Evans Trio the following year, where he would stay through 1975).
The October Suite represents one of pianist Steve Kuhn’s (b. 1938) earliest albums under his own name, but the first to be released on a major label. At the time, the pianist was known mostly as a sideman in the bands of Kenny Dorham, John Coltrane (a role for which he was quickly, and notoriously relieved), Stan Getz and Art Farmer. He also maintained a trio at times during this period, but October was likely fashioned to be his breakout release.
While Kuhn cited the influence of Art Tatum, Bud Powell and Bill Evans, his playing – especially at the time – seemed more inclined toward the freer approaches of then-emerging and like-minded pianists Don Friedman and Paul Bley. Kuhn would, however, struggle more to find his own voice over much of the next decade before emerging on the ECM label for a fine string of records.
Pairing Kuhn with McFarland was, however, genuinely inspired, and likely the result of Impulse Records A&R man Bob Thiele (the producer had been working with both artists in different capacities over the previous year). The result, The October Suite, finds McFarland exploring new means of scoring while Kuhn tempers his more ambitious inklings to work within a more structured format.
The half dozen McFarland originals featured here include such highlights as “One I Could Have Loved” and “St. Tropez Shuttle” from the string-quartet side and the delightful “Traffic Patterns” from the woodwinds side. These particular numbers also spotlight the peculiar, but positive intuitive alchemy that McFarland and Kuhn seem to share. Just when you think the arrangement disregards the soloist, or vice-versa, the two symbiotically reconnect exactly when you fear the worst.
The disc’s memorable opening track, “One I Could Have Loved,” is quite different here – more ruminative and abstract – than the other recordings of this otherwise melodic and particularly haunting composition. The piece was originally intended as the opening theme to the McFarland-scored film “13,” which was originally scheduled for release in February 1967, the same month The October Suite was released.
McFarland himself seemed partial to the theme. In addition to the version with Kuhn heard here, McFarland arranged versions of the song for himself (on Soft Samba Strings), Zoot Sims (Waiting Game) and Cal Tjader (Solar Heat – there as “Eye of the Devil,” which was the new title of the film when it was released in the Fall of 1967). (Demo tapes exist of a version of “One I Could Have Loved” with lyrics, but the publisher credits no lyricist and a vocal version of the song was never officially released.)
Nice variations of the theme were also recorded by Jimmy Smith and Wes Montgomery in a stunning Oliver Nelson arrangement for the 1967 disc Jimmy & Wes – The Dynamic Duo (there as “13 [Death March]”), guitarist Lee Ritenour for his superb 2002 disc Rit’s House (there as “13”) and drummer/vibes player Michael Benedict and The Gary McFarland Legacy Ensemble (with Joe Locke) for the 2015 disc Circulation (Benedict, it should be remembered, was married to McFarland’s widow, Gail, until her death from cancer in 2007).
As parlayed here, McFarland and Kuhn provide “One I Could Have Love” with, perhaps, its most filmic reading. Like an extended tension or suspense cue, it riffs perfectly off the main theme of a supernatural horror or psychological thriller film, the kind J. Lee Thompson’s “Eye of the Devil” aspired to be.
“This is beautiful music,” wrote pianist Marian McPartland in her five-star review in the October 5, 1967, issue of DownBeat magazine, “of many moods and many feelings—thoughtful, gentle, dream-like. Yet there are moments when it erupts with fire and pulsating excitement that compels one’s attention. McFarland is a tremendously gifted composer and arranger, and here he writes as if he were picturing scenes and incidents dear to him. (…)
“The interplay between piano, bass, and drums is exceedingly good; these three sensitive, imaginative musicians are the perfect choice for interpreting music of this kind—expressing their own ideas within the framework of the arrangements with disciplined freedom. (…)
“Listening to this, and in fact, to the entire album, should refresh the mind and spirit considerably.” Such a description just as aptly applies to Ms. McPartland’s own Silent Pool (1997), an album arranged and conducted by Alan Broadbent.
But not all were as easily impressed.
“McFarland’s intents are serious,” wrote early McFarland supporter Gene Lees in the July 1967 issue of High Fidelity. “But the whole project reeks of the arty, and a certain pale pastoralism in which McFarland seems to have become hung up.
“Pianist Kuhn also is deeply promising. But he is caught in what I call The Bill Evans Problem. Almost every young pianist is. (…) Kuhn sounds like he’s trying hard to avoid Evans while retaining his approach to tone and touch. He becomes simply cerebral.”
The October Suite was issued on CD in Japan in 1991 and in the United States and Europe in 2003.
Gary McFarland and Steve Kuhn would reunite one last time for the pianist’s eponymous album from 1971 (pictured above). Here, rather than using McFarland’s orchestral sketches as a launching pad for pianistic explorations, it is Kuhn’s compositions that compel McFarland’s minimalist orchestrations for string quartet. On this occasion, Kuhn switches between the acoustic and electric piano, adding the occasional nasally, monotonic vocal.
Bassist Ron Carter, who himself switches here between the upright and electric bass, is back on board, while the group is rounded out by Fusion pioneers Billy Cobham on drums and Airto Moreira on percussion. McFarland’s often mournful string work is especially notable, especially on “Pearlie’s Swine” (a.k.a. “The Zoo”), “Silver,” “Hold Out Your Hand” (a.k.a. “The Drinking Song”) and – in the most October-sounding piece here – “Ulla” (a.k.a. “Remembering Tomorrow”).
The Steve Kuhn album, recorded in July 1971, proved to be the penultimate project Gary McFarland worked on before the composer and arranger’s untimely death at the terribly young age of 38 in November of that year. (Strikingly, the eldest of McFarland’s two children, Milo, was also 38 years old when he passed away in 2002.)
The pianist’s disc was released that very same month and the Steve Kuhn Trio, featuring bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Marty Morell, was among the many musicians and former collaborators who played in tribute at McFarland’s memorial service in New York City that month. (This includes the great percussionist Airto, who describes his tribute in Kristian St. Clair’s essential documentary “This is Gary McFarland.”)
In March 2003, the Steve Kuhn Trio (with bassist David Finck and drummer Peter Erskine) performed The October Suite album at Claremont McKenna College’s Pickford Auditorium with the American Jazz Institute Chamber Ensemble, led by Mark Masters. Kuhn would later reunite with the Mark Masters Ensemble for its all-McFarland program Wish Me Well (2006).
In his book “The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records” (2006), journalist Ashley Kahn cites The October Suite as one of 33 of the most notable Impulse releases between 1961 and 2004. Here, Kahn lets the pianist reflect on the occasion:
“Gary and I had a very close relationship,” Kuhn said. McFarland “was really a very natural writer. He had an idea in his head of the mood he wanted, all figured out before he started writing. He didn’t obsess over certain things that other writers who had more training would have. He really had a unique voice considering the number of years he was on the scene, which wasn’t that many. Still to this day, I think about him a lot.”
He continued: “What resonated [on the record] for me more were the string pieces; there was a certain atmosphere and elegiac quality to the string writing he did. The woodwind section pieces were more upbeat in a way, and the strings were a little more melancholy. My favorite was ‘Remember When,’ which is the last song on the side with the strings.”
“I was invited to play the music from The October Suite in California [in March 2003]. That was the first time the album had been performed live, and the first time it had been played since we recorded it in the late sixties. That’s almost forty years that went by. The music sounded to me as fresh as it did back then. That for me speaks volumes – it didn’t sound dated at all.”