Toshiko Mariano Quartet

Individually Toshiko and Charlie Mariano have been growing in the concentrated power and spontaneous passion of their playing. Each has also been developing a cohesive, consistent personal style.

Toshio and Charlie are similar in temperament in several ways. Toshiko is very shy, quick in perception and stubbornly inner-directed in her determination to find her way musically by herself at her own pace. Charlie Mariano is laconic and very soft spoken off stand, who too also releases unsuspected energy and ferocity of emotion when he plays. Primarily an improviser, he is more concerned with the freshness and raw spontaneity of a solo than with whether it is thoroughly polished.

For this album, everything was done in one or two takes, not counting a couple of false starts. The veteran in the crisply integrated accompaniment is Gene Cherico, born in Buffalo in 1933. He had been with Toshiko when she led a trio and has also worked with Herb Pomeroy and Maynard Ferguson. He's been a member of the Toshiko Mariano Quartet since its inception. Eddie Marshall, joined the quartet about seven months before this session after sitting in with the Marianos in Hartford.