The David Murray Octet played its first gig at Kunle Mwanga festival in 1978 in SoundScapes in New York. This date was the result of two years of the band making obscure loft jazz gigs and a few festivals in Europe. I think the band later worked at the famed Newport Jazz Festival and Alice Tully Hall. The Octet was a all star loft jazz group where each of the members had their own ensembles and wrote music as well, some far more intricate and delicate than my own. My focus at the time was to have a standing unit with five horns up front intricately weaved horn lines over a strong blues based rhythm section, they swing like hell. One of my favorites of the recording is Jasvan, written for the great photographer of the Harlem Renaissance James Van Der Zee. I purchased his piano for 300 dollars as he was being audited by the IRS and had all his thing in storage to sell off and pay his huge tax debt. Imagine the government attacking a man at 93 years old. I wrote all of this music on this piano and later donated it to Joe Lee Wilsons Ladies Fort* for concerts. Another composition is dedicated to Dewey Redman, another idol of mine on tenor sax. The Hill was written for my mentor Julius Hemphill of the World Saxophone Quartet, for all that he taught me. The title track of course went on to be one of my most listened to ballad of that time. *The Ladies' Fort was a Jazz performance loft in New York. It was run by gospel and jazz singer Joe Lee Wilson during the 1970s.