Holy Ghost is the first comprehensive attempt to build a monument in sound to Albert Ayler. The settings -- radio and TV sessions, studio demos, private recordings, live concert footage -- find his music at its most liberated. And with the sponsorship and assistance of Ayler's family, friends, and colleagues, Holy Ghost documents his never-before-heard first and last recordings, bookending rare and unissued music from every stage of his career. (Revenant Records)

Albert Ayler’s two-week tour of Europe in November, 1966, most of it with that year’s annual “Newport in Europe” package, was a high point of this great, tragic artist’s career. Now that his innovations have been so influential in 21st-century jazz, younger listeners may not feel the exhilarating impact that his music had at the time. The nightly concerts featured a succession of stars – Dave Brubeck, Stan Getz, Illinois Jacquet, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins. Following these main stream artists, the final act, the show’s only avant-garde act, blew away audiences with Ayler’s gigantic tenor saxophone sound, the liberated unique sound of his group, its sweet-singing repertoire.