Greenwich, Sonny Quartet - Bird of Paradise

Tracks

Side 1

		Track Name	Length
	1	Of Stars & Strings	01:15
	2	Bird of Paradise	08:33
	3	Only One Earth	12:24

Side 2

		Track Name	Length
	1	Not While I'm Around	09:56
	2	Night and Day	08:56
	3	Españada	06:45

Photos

Videos

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Information/Write-up

Stand-up guitarist, saxophone fluency, an identifiable sound… one can almost hear these often tired but usually inaccurate clichés.

SONNY GREENWICH can challenge that sort of contrived description.

SONNY GREENWICH has the influence of John Coltrane and McCoy Tyner in his harmonic and spiritual approach. His music is a blend of lyricism with a beautifully modal melodic line making the swing of Sonny Rollins dance. But to simply break down Greenwich’s influences, as one often does with the usual comparisons, is to miss the point.

With Greenwich, the music is more than the sum of its influences. As with all music, it must be experienced firsthand and allowed to speak. This album has the lyrical, the intense, and the beautiful, both in Greenwich’s compositions and the works of others. Greenwich’s originality lies in his view of the world, which he injects into his music.

SONNY GREENWICH has spent the last 20 years trying to make the guitar sound less like a guitar and more like the music he hears inside himself. This album captures a sound that seems to have always existed, a sound that gives credence to the feeling of timelessness.

Greenwich’s playing has a sense of history. The history of black American music, and the history of his own career. Records by McCoy Tyner and Hank Mobley bear testimony to that. But it has taken the freedom of an independent label and the loyalty of an audience to finally emerge from the background.
-Bob Sunenblick, Uptown Records

Sonny Greenwich: electric guitar, guitar synthesizer
Fred Henke: piano
Ron Séguin: bass
André White: drums

Produced by Jim West
Engineered by Ian Terry
Recorded at Studio Victor, Montreal (November 1986)

Cover painting by Hugo Wuethrich
Graphic design by Image Ades
Photography by Winston Cass

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