It was at the first Dortmund Jazz Festival in Germany on October 31, 1976 that this group hit a magic peak. ... The Braxton/Lewis/Holland/Alt schul line-up lasted for barely six months. They played their first concert together in Boston in May 1976 and their last in Berlin on November 4. ... For me, the special attraction of the Dortmund concert is its air of celebration. There's a palpable sense of fun to this music, attributable in part (I suspect) to the presence of George Lewis, who had just replaced trumpeter Kenny Wheeler in the quartet. The empathy between the two Chicagoans fairly fizzes from the speakers: Lewis romps through these tunes with a snorting, rumbustious glee that elicits a brilliantly bravura and playful response from Braxton.
