The Doubtful Guest

In 1976, the American Composer, Michael Mantler collaborated with writer/illustrator Edward Gorey to produce an orchestrated version of some of Gorey's tales from his anthology, Amphigorey. The result was a record called, The Hapless Child. The Hapless Child unfortunately seems to have been discontinued and not available, but it is a unique body of music that still holds up in a timeless fashion. It was a complexly rich mixture of big band, avant classicism, jazz and rock. The guitarist was the Swedish jazz/rock artist, Terje Rypdal, one of my favorite players of all time, I believe Jack DeJohnette played drums, Mantlers wife at the time, the great composer Carla Bley played keyboards, Steve Swallow was the bassist and the ethereally tragic voice of Robert Wyatt sang the lyrics. It was an incredible collection and perhaps never performed live. At the time, it was one of my favorite records.
In 1987 at the International Avant Arts Festival in Munich, Mantler had a series of concerts recreating the music and I am not sure of the musicians, but Jack Bruce, the great Jazz/Rock/Blues bassist and avant gardist in his own right sang the pieces. Jack had collabvorated with Mantler on the stark orchestration of the Beckett play, No Answer in the early 70's and had worked with both Mantler and Bley on many other projects. In this series is a very good performance of No Answer which I may post later. No Answer is still available as an import.
This was recently posted on YouTube and this is great modern American music you need to hear!