Amaranths are everlasting flowers, and A Symphony of Amaranths is dedicated to two immortals who produced the greatest orchestral jazz music - Duke Ellington and Gil Evans. The whole work is based on their initials - the notes DE and GE - and A Symphony of Amaranths is the second in a trilogy of works begun with The Greek Variations and followed by Kaleidoscope of Rainbows that all use a sequence of notes to provide the foundation for composition and improvisation. The album, recorded in 1971, was the first recording ever to receive an Arts Council award. Scored for a large jazz orchestra (effectively the New Jazz Orchestra, which Neil Ardley had directed in the 1960s) with added woodwind, harp and strings, A Symphony of Amaranths is the most romantic and harmonically dense piece of music that Neil Ardley ever composed.
  This album also contains two vocal settings by Neil Ardley, the earliest example of his vocal music. The first is a setting of Edward Lear's famous nonsense poem The Dong with a Luminous Nose wonderfully and uniquely told by Ivor Cutler backed by an unusual chamber orchestra containing keyboards, vibraphone, harp, violin and cello that provides an atmospheric setting for the poem. The second setting is of three poems by W.B. Yeats, James Joyce and Lewis Carroll, beautifully sung by Norma Winstone with the large jazz orchestra minus the strings.

Tracks    [Total time 47.55]
A Symphony of Amaranths : 1 Carillon    2 Nocturne    3 Entracte    4 Impromptu; The Dong with a Luminous Nose; Three Poems : 1 After Long Silence    2 She Weeps Over Rahoon    3 Will You Walk A Little Faster?

Collective Personnel
Derek Watkins, Nigel Carter, Henry Lowther, Harold Beckett (trumpets) : Derek Wadsworth, Ray Premru (trombones) : Dick Hart (tuba) : Barbara Thompson, Dave Gelly, Don Rendell, Dick Heckstall-Smith (woodwind, saxes) : John Clementson (oboe) : Bunny Gould (bassoon) : Dave Gelly (glockenspiel) : Neil Ardley (prepared piano) : David Snell, Sidonie Goossens (harp) : Stan Tracey (piano, celeste) : Karl Jenkins (electric piano) : Alan Branscombe (harpsichord) : Frank Ricotti (vibraphone, percussion) : Chris Laurence, Jeff Clyne (bass) : Jon Hiseman (drums, percussion) : Eric Gruenberg, Jack Rothstein, Kelly Isaacs (violin) : Ken Essex (viola) : Charles Tunnell, Francis Gabarro (cello) : Ivor Cutler (narrator) ; Norma Winstone (vocal) : Jack Rothstein, Neil Ardley (conductor).

This work, recorded in 1976, completed a trilogy begun with The Greek Variations and continued with A Symphony of Amaranths. All of these works are based on a sequence of notes that provide the foundation for composition and improvisation; Kaleidoscope of Rainbows uses the five-note scale of Balinese gamelan music and has been seen as an early example of world music. It is a fully-fledged piece of jazz composition and the work is, in The Essential Jazz Records, judged as one of the 500 best albums in the entire history of jazz and one of very few British works to be included. It is notable for its "elliptical, emotional tunes" [The Guardian] and a ravishing saxophone solo by Barbara Thompson.
  This CD also includes an electronic work called Intimate Vistas that dates from 1980 and was never released, and a reworking of part of Kaleidoscope of Rainbows called Refracted Rainbow by Zyklus and recorded in 1991.

Tracks    [Total time 76.26]
Kaleidoscope of Rainbows : Intimate Vistas : Refracted Rainbow

Personnel
Kaleidoscope of Rainbows
Neil Ardley (director, synthesizer) : Ian Carr (trumpet, flugelhorn) : Barbara Thompson, Tony Coe, Brian Smith, Bob Bertles (saxophone, woodwind) : Paul Buckmaster (cello) : Ken Shaw (guitar) : Geoff Castle, Dave McRae or John Taylor (electric piano, synthesizer) : Roger Sutton (bass guitar) : Roger Sellers (drums) : Trevor Tomkins (percussion)

Intimate Vistas
Neil Ardley, Richard Burgess (synthesizers)

Refracted Rainbow
Neil Ardley, Warren Greveson, John L. Walters (synthesizers) : Ian Carr (trumpet, flugelhorn)

Neil Ardley based this 1978 album on the ancient idea of the Harmony of the Spheres, the idea that each planet produces a musical note related to its orbit. It was reasoned that, as everything in the heavens is perfect, the notes must sound together to produce a perfect harmony. Neil Ardley synthesized the actual harmony of the spheres, deriving the frequencies of the notes from the orbital periods of the planets. It can be heard in the all-synthesizer track Soft Stillness and the Night, and it is appropriately mysterious and dramatic.
  The album features John Martyn on guitar over a rich orchestral sound mixing electronic with acoustic instruments and voices. Harmony of the Spheres was the subject of a 30-minute film directed by Peter Walker and shown on ITV's The South Bank Show in 1979.

Tracks    [Total time 46.25]
Upstarts All : Leap in the Dark : Glittering Circles : Fair Mirage : Soft Stillness and the Night : Headstrong, Headlong : Towards Tranquillity

Personnel
Neil Ardley (synthesizers) : John Martyn (guitar) : Billy Kristian (bass guitar) : Geoff Castle (piano, synthesizer) : Richard Burgess (drums) : Trevor Tomkins (percussion) : Barbara Thompson (flute, soprano) : Tony Coe (clarinet, soprano) : Ian Carr (trumpet, flugelhorn) : Norma Winstone & Pepi Lemer (voices)

Zyklus was formed by John L. Walters and Neil Ardley in 1988 with the aim of exploring the boundaries of composition and improvisation. It is a live electronic jazz orchestra producing both composed and semi-improvised music to inspire an improvising soloist. The Zyklus Midi Performance System - an amazing machine that enables a performer to control up to four synthesizers or samplers simultaneously - makes this possible, and the group is named after it. Walters, Ardley and Warren Greveson handle three MPS machines, and Ian Carr is the improvising soloist.
  The album was recorded in 1991 and contains original compositions by Ardley, Greveson and Walters, notably Walters' ominous epic Before The Oil Ran Out, and an unusual Ardley-Greveson arrangement of Round Midnight in which the classic tune is taken to pieces and hauntingly reassembled note by note.

Tracks    [Total time 60.28]
Refracted Rainbow : No Score : Rooms : Enchanted Isle : I K Brunel : Round Midnight : Before The Oil Ran Out : Remembrances

Personnel
Neil Ardley (keyboard, Zyklus MPS) : Warren Greveson (guitar, drum pad, Zyklus MPS) : John L. Walters (keyboard, Zyklus MPS, electronic wind instrument) : Ian Carr (trumpet, flugelhorn)

Creation Mass is a choral work composed in 2000-1 with music by Neil Ardley and words by Patrick Huddie. These are based on the traditional form of the Latin Mass - Gloria, Kyrie, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei - to which Patrick Huddie has added six additional sections. Neil Ardley has set the words for junior and senior choirs, two soloists and narrator, two pianos and percussion with music that is both contemporary and tuneful, contemplative and lively.
  The story of creation told in Creation Mass in based on modern scientific understanding, but interpreted through a poet's eyes. The work celebrates the creation of the Universe in a colossal expansion (the Big Bang) some 12 billion years ago, and the later emergence of the Sun and Earth from the debris of an exploding star or supernova. The Earth is central to Creation Mass, being seen as our only home, immensely precious and beautiful but subject to the damage that we are capable of inflicting upon it just as we inflict cruelty upon each other. Yet the work finds grounds for hope, and seeks for a true way towards peace with the help of wise or holy ones from various traditions. We will need all the help we can get to survive this millennium.
  Creation Mass has its own website with further information and extracts from the work. The recording, which is a live recording of the first performance in 2001, can be ordered from this website or the Creation Mass website.

Tracks    [Total time 55.23]
In The Beginning : Gloria : Hymn : I Am : Lamentations : Kyrie : Credo : Hope : Sanctus : Agnus Dei : Blessings

Personnel
Anna Mundy (soprano) : Andrew Parker (baritone) : Patrick Huddie (narrator) : Gillian Bithel and David Önaç (pianos) : The Combined Junior and Senior Choirs and Percussion Group of Lady Manners School, Bakewell, Derbyshire conducted by Richard Barnes

The New Jazz Orchestra, which Neil Ardley directed, was a meeting place for many talented young jazz musicians and composers in Britain in the 1960s. Inspired to some extent by the great American jazz arranger Gil Evans, it consciously styled itself a jazz orchestra, rather than a big band. The NJO had been going for four years when this album was recorded in 1968 and these pieces, the cream of its repertoire, exemplify the maturing craft of its composers and arrangers in developing not only tone colour but also ways of integrating improvisation and composition. They are well served by the orchestra's spirited soloists and spring-heeled rhythm section.

Tracks    [Total time 44.19]
Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe (Neil Ardley) : Naïma (John Coltrane arr Alan Cohen) : Angle (Howard Riley) : Ballad (Mike Taylor) : Dusk Fire (Michael Garrick) : Nardis (Miles Davis arr Neil Ardley) : Study (Tansman arr Mike Taylor) : Rebirth (Michael Gibbs)

Personnel
Derek Watkins, Henry Lowther, Harold Beckett, Ian Carr (trumpets) : John Mumford, Michael Gibbs, Derek Wadsworth or Tony Russell (trombones) : George Smith (tuba) : Barbara Thompson, Dave Gelly, Jim Philip, Dick Heckstall-Smith (woodwind, saxes) : Frank Ricotti (vibraphone, marimba) : Jack Bruce (double bass) : Jon Hiseman (drums) : Neil Ardley (director)

The New Jazz Orchestra was formed in December 1963, its name reflecting both the youth of its members - their average age was only 23 - and their mission to perform the new kind of orchestral jazz that was then developing in America but still to be heard in Britain. The personnel included such (then) non-jazz instruments as flute, horn and tuba in addition to the standard brass, saxes and rhythm line-up of the big band. This is the NJO's first album, recorded in March 1965 before an invited audience to make the young band feel at ease.
  In these early days, the orchestra's repertoire consisted almost entirely of arrangements of standard songs and jazz tunes. There were traditional big-band numbers as well as more orchestral pieces that made use of a wider range of tone colour allied to more complex harmony. There is only one original composition here, Neil Ardley's Shades of Blue, but some of the arrangements are beginning to explore composition; Western Reunion for example soon abandons the simple tune and develops it.
   With Jon Hiseman at the helm, the NJO was remarkable at the time for its rhythm section - no other British large ensemble could swing like this. And every section contained great jazz soloists in the making already playing imaginative and well-constructed improvisations with tremendous drive and verve.

Tracks    [Total time 44.00]
Big P ( Jimmy Heath) : Shades of Blue (Neil Ardley) : So What (Miles Davis arr Les Carter, Paul Rutherford) : If You Could See Me Now (Dameron, Sigman arr Lionel Grigson) : Tiny's Blues (T. & A.Kahn arr Dave Gelly) : Milestones (Miles Davis arr Les Carter) : Django (John Lewis arr Neil Ardley) : Maria (Bernstein, Sondheim arr Les Carter) : Western Reunion (Gerry Mulligan arr Neil Ardley)

Personnel
Bob Leaper, Mike Phillipson, Tony Dudley, Ian Carr (trumpets & flugelhorn) : Mick Palmer ( French horn) : John Mumford, Paul Rutherford (trombones) : Peter Harvey (bass trombone) : Dick Hart (tuba) : Les Carter, Trevor Watts; Barbara Thompson, Dave Gelly, Tom Harris, Sebastian Freudenberg (woodwind, saxes) : Mike Barrett (piano) : Tony Reeves (bass) : Jon Hiseman (drums) : Neil Ardley (director)

Mike Taylor was a British jazz composer and pianist, and song writer. He died tragically young in 1969, leaving very little music behind him. In 1973, several of the people who had known and worked with him recorded an album of Mike Taylor's surviving orchestral music, jazz tunes and songs as a memorial to him and to preserve his work as a composer and song writer for posterity. These included Jon Hiseman and Barbara Thompson, who knew Mike Taylor intimately and worked on much of this music with him; Ian Carr, who originally introduced Mike Taylor to Denis Preston, who recorded two LPs by Mike Taylor; Neil Ardley, who as leader of the New Jazz Orchestra had directed performances of his orchestral music; Henry Lowther and Dave Gelly, who featured Mike Taylor's music with their own bands; and Norma Winstone, one of the few singers able to sing Mike Taylor's songs.
    Denis Preston kindly funded the project and the memorial album was successfully recorded and mixed, but it was never issued. However Neil Ardley kept a copy of the master tape, and this has been transferred to CD to make this characteristic collection of Mike Taylor's music available for the first time.

Tracks    [Total time 45.14]
Half Blue : Pendulum : I See You : Son of Red Blues - Brown Thursday : Song of Love : Folk Dance No 2 : Summer Sounds : Land of Rhyme in Time : Timewind : Jumping Off The Sun : Black and White Raga

Collective Personnel
Tony Fisher, Greg Bowen, Henry Lowther, Ian Carr (trumpets, flugelhorn) : Chris Pyne, David Horler (trombones) : Ray Premru (bass trombone) : Barbara Thompson (flute, alto flute, soprano sax) : Ray Warleigh (flute, alto sax) : Stan Sulzmann (flute, alto sax, soprano sax) : Bob Efford (oboe, tenor sax, bassoon) : Dave Gelly (bass clarinet, clarinet, tenor sax) : Bunny Gould (bass clarinet, bassoon) : Peter Lemer (piano, electric piano, synthesizer) : Alan Branscombe (vibraphone) : Chris Laurence, Ron Mathewson (bass, bass guitar) : Jon Hiseman (drums, percussion) : Neil Ardley (director) : Norma Winstone (vocal)