About 35 years before the current crop of downtown New York improvisers -- such as
Don Byron,
Pachora, and
John Zorn's
Masada -- were melding free jazz with world musics like Klezmer, and Greek, Eastern European, and Arabic modalities, there was
Joe Maneri.
Paniots Nine includes a demo made for Atlantic Records in 1963 by the saxophonist/clarinetist/composer and his working band at the time: pianist
Don Burns, bassist
John Beal, and drummer Pete Dolger, who were all interested in free jazz, and 20th century classical music (
Maneri had already been commissioned to write a piano concerto for
the Boston Symphony, and all had played weddings, from Turkish to Jewish). The sound quality is not digital, but more than acceptable considering it was taken from a copy of a reel-to-reel tape.