September 3, 2021
Decca UK
1xLP
While we have spilled no small amount of ink here about our love of the eclectic jazz that’s been coming out of Britain over the last few years, the island has been putting-out top shelf jazz albums since the days of Mingus and Davis. Case-in-point, Windmill Tilter: The Story of Don Quixote, recently reissued as part of the ongoing British Jazz Explosion series which takes a look at some of the masterpieces from some of the country’s great jazz labels. Windmill Tilter is a concept album inspired by Miguel de Cervantes’s epic helmed by trumpeter Kenny Wheeler and saxophonist John Dankworth (not to mention guitar work from none other than John McLaughlin). The epic scale of the novel is complemented by the huge scale of instrumentation which includes four saxophonists, two tubs, two pianos, four trumpets and two trombones to create an album that sounds grand enough to be worthy of its source material.