“After Stephane Grappelli and Jean-Luc Ponty, France now has a third great violin player, His name is Didier Lockwood.” (Liberation, Paris). Besides Grapelli and Ponty, Lockwood’s influences include Polish violinist Zbigniew Seifert, John Coltrane, and Frank Zappa. Born in 1956, Lockwood was classically trained, but moved on to rock-inspired jazz at an early age. He followed in Ponty’s fusion footsteps with the use of the electric violin, taking it one step further by experimenting in extending the sounds of the violin.

This 1980 production promises a whole world of fun with an all-star lineup from seven European countries and the USA – all major names on the international scene. The results: an amazing admixture of modern jazz, fusion, and the avante-guarde. One World in Three fuses the extraordinary violin trio of Blake (USA), Lockwood (France), and Debeski (Poland) in an amalgam of intuition and inspiration. Played in quintet, Jacassiere Intime exhibits the gypsy heritage of guitarist Christian Escoude, while Trans Tanz features the entire band filling out pianist Wolfgang Dauner’s rich polyphonic score. Right Atrium has the full band swinging straight ahead in 5/4 with shrill, pulsating harmonies spurring the soloists on. Christwood is an infectious up-tempo Escoude-Lockwood duo that shows you don’t need a rhythm section to be able to swing, while Haargang has guitarist Harry Pepl and Dauner in duo delving into the dark and bluesy before taking a walk on the wild side. One for Beb by legendary avante-garde bassist Barre Phillips is a harrowing experiment in group improvisation. One World in Eight – a sublime conversation in the universal language of jazz.