After spending the sixties apprenticing with Max Roach, Art Blakey, and Miles Davis, Gary Bartz spent the seventies moving away from his hard bop roots to a more eclectic mix of funk, blues, spoken-word, and pop -- what he termed, "American music." The Red and Orange Poems, like much of his recent work, is closer to the mainstream school of Parker and Coltrane, yet Bartz's arrangements remain adventurous to the last. Highlights: "Nusia's Poem" and "But Not for Me."

Harold Check