Customer Reviews
Something really special - By: William Burn, 01 Feb 2006 
History has been singularly unfair to Andrew Hill. He released several albums during the 1960s, but quickly thereafter faded into obscurity when he found no more funding to produce more records. However, this one disc is enough to mark him as a bandleader of great originality & imagination, & a composer of rare talent.
The band itself is very similar to that which recorded Eric Dolphy's masterpiece "Out to Lunch", but this session is by no means a simple rehash of those principles. The compositions are as far removed from Tin Pan Alley as Dolphy's, but they seem more immediately cohesive, & (though this be sacreligous to say as much), less wearing on the ear. The playing is terrific througout, especially from the 18-year-old Tony Williams, who is given great freedom to twist & turn the beat which Hill holds steady. Joe Henderson deserves,in my opinion, greater acclaim for being a geniunely distinctive tenor voice during the 1960s when placed next to Coltrane, & Eric Dolphy provides exhilarating alto solos.
This isn't run-of the mill jazz by any means, but it is a first-rate band playing really special music. Buy it.
Andrew Hill Meets Eric Dolphy at Blue Note - By: hj, 16 Nov 2005 Routinely listed as one of the top 20 modern jazz albums of the 60s, the secret of “Point of Departure” (1964) liesin its unique line up of diverse geniuses, including bop trumpet veteran Kenny Dorham, post-bop sax heavyweight Joe Henderson, maverick pianist & auteur Hill, avant garde hero Eric Dolphy, & not forgetting Miles’ young drum god Tony Williams. For years this was the only Andrew Hill album I owned or knew. I thought (& I’m sure I’m not alonein this) that it was basically an Eric Dolphy album, a companion piece to “Out To Lunch” (recorded for Blue Note a month earlier with same rhythm section) – one of several Dolphy albums inexplicably credited to sidemen. Having now become acquainted with this excellent series of reissues from Andrew Hill’s 1960s Blue Note catalogue, I realise that Hill is definitely THE presiding genius here. Without his immaculate, if challenging, compositions & his facility for detailed arrangements, the other assembled geniuses/madmen would have probably descended into ill-matched chaos.
If you have an old scratchy vinyl version it’s worth considering upgrading to this CD reissue: it has three bonus alternate takes – that’s 20 minutes or so extra music from the original sessions.
Little-known masterpiece - By: , 02 Jun 2001 Almost the same band as the one on Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch - but led by the pensive, individualistic pianist & composer Andrew Hill, & coloured lavishly by the imagination of the great tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson. There are elements of the same atonal experimentation & rhythmic splintering of Out to Lunch, but I think it's an even better, more accomplished album. There's a witty tribute to Monk called "New Monastery".
