Bassist Charlie Haden has reassembled much of his acclaimed late-Sixties Liberation Music Orchestra – including Dewey Redman, Don Cherry, Carla Bley, Michael Mantler, Paul Motian – for The Ballad of the Fallen. Spun through the delicate web of Bley's riveting arrangements, the compositions breathe with the diverse sadness and beauty of life itself.

Alternately swinging, contemplative, carousing and cathartic, The Ballad of the Fallen frequently invokes light march or Latin folk-waltz rhythms and rumbling, free-form licks, as well as beautifully sculpted bits of chamber horn-ensemble magic that delicately drapes Bley's lean, accessible structures with rich, moving musical cloaks. Much less strident than the controversial Liberation Music Orchestra release (now fourteen years old), Haden's new view on Ballad seems to be that the fury and swath-cutting Sixties consciousness has given way to a more distant, solemn reflection on the world's multitudinous toils, pains and troubles. Particularly concerned these days with the threat of nuclear war, he liberally laces his musical efforts with subtle, funereal undertones, as if to offer up a last warning hymn for all mankind.

More than anything, though, The Ballad of the Fallen is a rare journey to the heart – a message from a few concerned music survivors who have gathered once more to offer reflections, hopes, fears and insights into the puzzlingly imperfect life around us. (RS 420)

JOE CAREY