The Awakening - Mirage (1973) [Remastered 2012]

Digitally remastered edition of this 1973 album. The Chicago-based jazz sextet know as the Awakening was in the front line of the second tier of jazz combos active in the first half of the 1970s, Sunny Murray, Hadley Caliman, Hampton Hawes, Billy Harper, Albert Mangelsdorff, and Fred Anderson. (Who inhabited the top tier? Certainly the Art Ensemble of Chicago and groups led by heavyweights Charles Mingus, Cecil Taylor, Elvin Jones, Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, Sonny Rollins, Keith Jarrett and Phil Woods.) The Awakening's jazz/hard bop with side trips into soul jazz, plus some free-jazz tonal expressionism--wears its age well on their second and final Black Jazz album Mirage