THE MAHAVISHNU PROJECT & THE EMERALD BEYOND: Revisiting a Wondrous Realm

The idea of performing the entire Visions of the Emerald Beyond album originally recorded by John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra in 1975 grew from our repertory ensemble’s recurring policy of performing “complete album evenings” in which all of the music from a particular Mahavishnu album is performed in sequence and without pause, from beginning to end. In the past we have presented the complete The Inner Mounting Flame, Birds of Fire, Between Nothingness & Eternity, and The Lost Trident Sessions.

The pieces from these albums hold together quite nicely when presented as continuous suites, and performing them without interruption lends a palpable intensity to the performances – emulating the experience of listening to a full album straight through without stopping and thus being taken on a little journey. 

It may seem difficult to believe but from its initial release until the present time, the pieces from Visions have rarely been revisited by John McLaughlin or any other artist for that matter. Certainly no other ensemble has performed these complete albums as suites of music until now.

Also of interest, according to Premik Russell Tubbs, Mahavishnu Orchestra Mach II member, is that Visions was recorded in “overdub style” wherein the band did not perform together on the original recording, but in separate sessions and was never actually performed in its entirety by MOII. Apparently much of this material did not interest John McLaughlin as a concert vehicle as such, and in fact many of the Visions pieces were never performed in concert at all. Visions of the Emerald Beyond was calling out to me for another look.

As a musician who works extensively in the area of classical composition, chamber music, conducting and arranging, I find that the complex material from Visions presents an irresistibly unique and exciting musical challenge, allowing me to utilize some of my skills previously untapped in the Mahavishnu Project setting. My concept for interpreting Visions is actually the same as it has been for all of the Mahavishnu music that our ensemble engages with. We view these works as they were originally intended – essentially as platforms for improvisation.

Apart from restoring the role of the keyboards to that of an equal solo voice in the ensemble, and the additions of percussion on “Pastoral” both of which were not the case on the original band’s recording, The Mahavishnu Project does not wish to make radical alterations to the existing composed material. For us there is interpretation in altering the orchestration and in the freedom of the improvised solos within the tunes. In the case of “Faith” and “If I Could See,” these pieces are treated as through-composed pieces with no improvisation at all. However, in a bit of a twist on “Opus One” (a Webern-influenced, fully-notated work and McLaughlin’s first string quartet) we actually do expand this piece, and open things up for an abstract, atonal improvisation expanding on the motifs of what was originally a thorny 15-second miniature. So, although perhaps not surprising given the context, it’s fair to say The Mahavishnu Project’s approach to this music is firmly rooted between a jazz and a classical interpretive performance aesthetic. 

There are myriad reasons that Visions of the Emerald Beyond stands out in the Mahavishnu canon. First and foremost, John McLaughlin has declared on more than one occasion that Visions is his favorite Mahavishnu Orchestra record. It is not difficult to see why. It certainly is his most ambitious and varied Mahavishnu outing, expanding the original groups instrumentation to include strings, winds, brass and voice, this transforming what was ostensibly a jazz-rock quintet into an extraordinary amplified chamber ensemble – one capable of realizing McLaughlin’s dream in which his Mahavishnu band truly functions as an orchestra. 

It is also interesting to note that for all of the moaning that purist fans of the original Mahavishnu Orchestra have done about the Mahavishnu Orchestra Mach II not being “true Mahavishnu,” I’m here to report that in the years we have been performing as The Mahavishnu Project, Visions has been the single most-requested album of our band to perform, and it surely remains a fan-favorite. 

At the same time, as much as I have always loved the album, I was not terribly interested in expanding our five-piece band or reducing the larger orchestrations to perform the Visions material with The Mahavishnu Project. Our own original mission statement made it clear that we would focus on the music from the first Mahavishnu Orchestra alone, since that in itself, was such an overwhelming task in itself. In the end, however, the insistence of the fans at our shows and a steady stream of emails spurred me to think, “Man, I better give Visions another listen. This soon gave way to “Wow. This would actually be pretty amazing live material if we added the right players and opened things up a bit!” 

The world premiere of the complete Visions of the Emerald Beyond by the Mahavishnu Project remains one of the most profound and memorable music-making experiences of my career. 

On a purely musical level, Visions is a visceral and evocative collection of pieces. Composed and recorded right on the heels of 1974’s Apocalypse, recorded with the London Symphony conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas and produced by George Martin, Visions would be McLaughlin’s most detailed book of compositions to date. Here, more than ever before, McLaughlin engages and explores extremely diverse musical directions, styles and instrumentation, including a full-on 12-piece chamber band where eastern-inflected modal lines are now fully-orchestrated for the first time, solo piano interludes give way to ecstatic contrapuntal outpourings; odd-meter funk; pre-Shakti acoustic intimacy; haunting art song, incendiary quintet jams, a meditative ballad, a spacey fantasia for electronically-processed violin; an atonal string quartet; and finishing up with an explosive duet for mutated guitar and drums, finally overtaken by the full force of the orchestra.

Clearly, variety was the order of the day, and the compositional concept throughout was that “each piece defines its own universe.” Stark contrasts and melding of disparate elements abound, making this one of Maestro McLaughlin’s most serious and successful efforts in conjoining intricate composition with improvisational forms in a wide range of contexts.

It’s one heck of a ride and in the best sense of the word, a compelling, timeless “fusion” of jazz, rock, funk, Western-classical, and Indian music.

We invite you all to join us as we journey back out into The Emerald Beyond – a wondrous realm we’ll be returning to again and again.

Gregg Bendian (2006)