The Mark Harvey Group's 2-CD set A Rite for All Souls, released in 2020 by Americas Musicworks, received the following review in Music Zoom. Check out the original posting in Italian at http://www.musiczoom.it/?p=31627#.XqwhzZlCR1M, or read the Google translation here:
Mark Harvey Group – A Rite for All Souls
We now know Mark Harvey as an established musician and arranger at the head of the Boston Aardvark Orchestra and who has often played alongside many of the big names in contemporary jazz. This double album, however, is something special: it is a concert held in 1971 at the Old West Church in Boston, found while putting his tapes in order. Then he made music with a group together with Peter H. Bloom on reed instruments and flutes, and Craig Ellis and Michael Standish on percussion; there was also Duncan John Draper on keyboards, who is not present here. After a first phase playing jazz rock, the group finds its own physiognomy on the avant-garde paths. It is a very creative period in American music and the four of them play in front of audiences lit only by the light of candles, creating intimate atmospheres for the enjoyment of the music. In this concert, almost a ritual, as the title wants to underline, the two parts are published entirely, each on a CD, the theatrical part is missing, but the music conveys the intentions of the group performed in very particular conditions. The interaction and concentration of the musicians is obvious, everything flows between inspired solos and free from constraints, in complete freedom. Also contributing is the multitude of instruments used, both by percussionists and Harvey, on trumpet, flugelhorn and other instruments of the brass family and Peter H. Bloom. In the midst of the music poems are recited, including Craig Ellis' Napalm: Rice Paper, in which the drama of the Vietnam war is remembered with the power of words. A beautiful historical and musical document.