BOOK REviewS

This section includes reviews of books on jazz subjects by a number of writers. Reviewers interested in contributing are welcome to contact the editor by filling out the form in the CONTACT tab. When contributing please include the title of the book and its author, the name of the publisher, the date of publication, the book’s ISBN number, and the number of pages in the book. Please also provide, if possible, a high resolution scan of the book’s cover. Readers can click on the INDEX button for a list of reviews in this folder.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS, VOLS 1-3

by Bruce Johnson

Reviewed by Ted Nettelbeck

September 20, 2026

This book is likely the end point to Bruce Johnson’s fascination with John Sangster’s music, principally the prodigious some five hours of composition and performance by 26 leading Australian jazz musicians led by Sangster, issued in three double-albums by EMI between 1974 and 1977 as The Lord of the Rings, Vols 1-3, which Johnson first reviewed 20 years ago (Johnson, 2006). This account therefore excludes consideration of two other albums, generated by Sangster’s creative interest in J R R Tolkien’s body of fictional stories about Middle Earth: The Hobbit Suite (1973) and Landscapes of Middle Earth (1978). Johnson’s starting point is that Sangster is “the most emotionally and stylistically wide-ranging jazz-based musician/composer that this country has ever produced”…