Eternal Rhythm is extoled as “Don Cherry’s masterwork” by Allmusic’s Brian Olewnick. It is “one of the earliest major examples of the idea that it was possible for any and all musical cultures to exist simultaneously”. Cherry had already earned his space in the jazz pantheon through his pocket trumpet play with the ground-breaking 1958-1961 Ornette Coleman Quartet. Later generations would know him primarily through his work with the world-music-oriented trio Codona, and his own multi-instrument “multikulti” explorations mingling diverse musical folkways. For this recording Cherry assembled some of Europe’s jazz elite, including Germans trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff, vibraphonist Karl Berger, and Pianist Joachim Kühn, and the innovative American guitarist Sonny Sharrock. The album is a suite, conjoining Cherry’s “Pan” flute playing, Balinese gamelan, blues, and the avant-garde. For music journalist Piero Scaruffi, the album engenders “an almost religious sense of communion with far-away civilizations.”
