Multi-instrumentalist and arranger Moe Koffman was born in Toronto in 1928 and was studying violin and alto saxophone at The Toronto Conservatory Of Music by the age of 13. After dropping out of high school in his mid-teens, Koffman began playing in dance bands with the likes of Horace Lapp, Leo Romanelli and Benny Louis. By 1948 he'd been named Canada's best alto saxophonist in a CBC poll and in 1950 he moved to the U.S. and played in bands with Sonny Dunham and Jimmy Dorsey, while studying flute with Harold Bennett and clarinet with Leon Russianoff.

After returning to Toronto in 1955, Koffman became the booking agent for George's Spaghetti House, where he also performed regularly for almost 30 years. The popularity of his 1958 song "Swinging Shepard Blues" gave him an unusually high profile for a Canadian jazz musician, and by the end of the 1960s he was making regular appearances on Canadian and U.S. television. Throughout the '70s and '80s Koffman recorded several jazz, classical and pop LPs, played on innumerable recordings by other artists and performed around the world both solo and as the leader of his own ensembles. In addition to many other awards, Koffman was appointed to the Order of Canada in 1993 and inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1997. He made his final public appearance as a musician in June of 2000 and passed away on March 28th, 2001 after being diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

A double concept album by a jazz flautist about the nine planets of the solar system: it doesn't get much more '70s than that. Did I mention that the song titles are accompanied by their astrological signs in the liner notes? Solar Explorations was recorded in July of 1974 at Toronto Sound Studios by producer Doug Riley and engineer Terry Brown. I've posted one song from each side of the album; "Neptune" and "Venus" were written and arranged by Koffman, while "Saturn" is credited to Rick Wilkins and "Pluto" to Don Thompson. There are almost twenty musicians identified in the liner notes;

Moe Koffman: flute, piccolo, alto & soprano sax
Doug Riley: keyboards, Fender Rhodes
Don Thompson, Rick Homme: bass
Terry Clarke, Claude Ranger: drums
Michael Craden: percussion
Sonny Greenwich: guitar
Guido Basso, Fred Stone, Arnie Chycoski, Al Stanwyck: trumpets
Rob McConnell, Ian McDougall, Bob Livingston: trombones
Eugene Amaro, Keith Jollimore: saxophones
David Rosenbloom: ARP synthesizer
Peter Schenkman: cello

All four of these tracks are straight-up jazz with none of the pop influences found on some of Koffman's other recordings. "Saturn" starts out fairly maniacally before fading off into a chilled-out ending, while "Neptune" is a more relaxed tune that does build to a frenzied peak towards the middle of the song. "Venus" is probably the most abstract number of the bunch, and "Pluto" (which had its planetary status revoked in 2006) is the quietest and most spaced-out.

Saturn
Neptune
Venus
Pluto