Jazz Articles about Bridgeleap

Bridgeleap: Bridgeleap Plays the Albert Ayler Songbook

by Norman Weinstein
April 1, 2006

Few jazz revolutionaries have taken seriously Albert Ayler's improvisations on the bagpipes, an instrument only wholly showcased in albums by the neglected Rufus Harley. Bridgeleap, a western Canadian band with the unlikely instrumentation of bagpipes, trumpet, tablas and digital beats, has taken Ayler's occasional bagpipe blowing seriously, boldly creating an album of Ayler's greatest hits, with the bagpipe, full-blast, at the center of the proceedings. The band's leader, Gus “Gussie" Plaid, opens the album with an arrangement ...