Outside America Jon Gibson is best known as the woodwind virtuoso of the Philip Glass Ensemble. Back home, he's as much a composer and visual artist as he is a performer. On this record he contributes in all three capacities: every track features the sound of his saxophone, three of the pieces are his own, and so is the artwork used on the jewel-case front. The rest of the music is by composers with whom Gibson maintains close contact. Steve Reich, Terry Riley and John Adams all contribute to the recital, as does Glass. And no less a figure than La Monte Young, legendary mentor of American minimalism, takes part in a rare performance of music by Terry Jennings, who might easily have become another key member of the minimalist movement had he lived beyond 1981.
All this promises well, yet the record has its downs as well as its ups. Two of the tracks are adaptations: John Adams's ''Pat's Aria'' comes from Nixon in China while Philip Glass's ''Bed'' from Act 4 of Einstein on the Beach, and neither arrangement is remarkable. An early and previously unrecorded piece by Terry Riley ought to have been a highlight, but Tread on the Trail has none of the allure of the roughly contemporary In C, and for all its jaunty, jazzy exterior is frustratingly aimless. Of Gibson's own compositions the most interesting is Song 3, a short monody loosely inspired by Scottish pibroch. Waltz, a latter-day Gymnopedie, is less striking, while Extensions II, a gentle, quasi-improvised piece for saxophone, drones, tabla-like tappings and natural sounds, is innocuous mood-music, loosely inspired by Indian models.
Three tracks save this record. The first is Steve Reich's Reed Phase of 1966, a rigorous piece closely allied to Come Out and Piano Phase, which has never been recorded before and is an important addition to the discography. The second is Gradus, the earliest composition by Philip Glass currently available on record (1968), and a fascinating essay on his characteristic additive technique. The third is Terry Jennings's sultry Terry's G Dorian 12-Bar Blues (here reconstructed by La Monte Young), which owes as much to jazz as it does to minimalism, and serves as an evocative memorial to one of the forgotten voices of American new music. Needless to say, Gibson plays everything with ease, elegance and absolute authority.'