Huge group improvisations have their place in music – not just jazz, but pretty much everything. What works best, a great deal of the time at least, is working with a few folks or a bunch of percussionists and a melodic player or two.

Marion Brown hadn’t sussed out that formula at the dawning of his career. And actually, working as a part of the ensemble which recorded John Coltrane’s Ascension it would seem that Brown had to work through those bigger groups to see the benefit of playing with smaller ensembles.

Over his career, in Europe and in the States, Brown sought to reflect a number of personal experiences, occasionally tied to race as with the 1973 Geechee Recollections. Efforts like that might be construed as expressions of the African experience in diaspora; a collection of stories that could only have happened to people taken unwittingly from their home and forced to live abroad.

While that perspective is amply relayed not just through Brown’s work, but any number of other players, there’s a culture view that apparently warranted being expressed as displayed by any number of latter day sixties’ recordings and even on into the seventies.

In 1969, while still living in Europe, Brown organized a loose outfit, mostly comprised of drummers (vibes being included in that estimation), a bassist, a single trumpet player and a vocalist. The sparse improvisations worked mostly because of the enormous bed of beats that any melodic line rested upon. There’re endless ways to break down each of the six efforts that make up In Sommerhausen, but most rely on any number of tiny instruments.

As the album opens with the eleven minute “Dance No. 1,” it’s clear that Brown is serving as an organizer as much as anything else, allowing the percussive shake to continue on for about three minutes before the vibes kick in and eventually his sax.

If that were the highlight of the disc, In Sommerhausen would still be worth checking out. And while “Exhibit B,” which might be as tied to Anthony Braxton’s work as much as anything else, doesn’t warrant intense listening, significant portions of each of the following tracks replete with vocals, but not necessarily words, are at the very least interesting.

Closing with “Dance No. 2” is sensible from the vantage point of having the album be circular to some extent, but it also summons that percussive focus again. And that’s really what music’s always been about.