Fifty years ago (yikes!) my high school band director played this album for me. He was fresh out of Indiana State Teachers College and said it was so atonal and bizarre that college music majors all over the country who believed this was the future direction of American music were committing suicide.
It was just structured noise to my high school sophomore ears.
I don’t recall how he got his copy of the LP, but it was virtually unobtainable. For years, it . was my answer to record shop owners who claimed to have everything. “Oh, really? How about Stan Kenton’s ‘City of Glass’?” An uncomfortable silence always followed.
Then, about 11 years ago, I found it on CD at the Carmel-Clay Public Library in Carmel, Ind. I made a copy and now it lives on my iPod.
I’m listening to it right now and my musical comprehension must have evolved because it’s gone from noise to listenable, interesting, surprising, and impressive. Kenton and Bob Graettinger were at least a half-century ahead of their time.
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