The Changeling

WITH THE RITUAL BEGINS AT SUNDOWN, ROBBY KRIEGER OPENS THE DOORS TO HIS JAZZ MUSE

- James Rotondi

“I DIDN’T PLAY Doors music for a long time after Ray Manzarek passed away,” sighs Robby Krieger. Instead, when Manzarek, his longtime friend and keyboard foil in the Doors — the group in which both musicians became rock legends in the 1960s alongside drummer John Densmore and late singer Jim Morrison — passed away in 2013 from cancer, Krieger took a break from performing Doors material for the next half-decade and threw himself into the jazzier side of his musical personality. He deepened his alliance with Frank Zappa bassist/arranger Arthur Barrow — not to mention Zappa alumni like keyboardist Tommy Mars and trumpeter Sal Marquez.

The result, honed over several years of live gigs and studio dates, is the bebop- and fusion-infused instrumental LP The Ritual Begins at Sundown, which boasts an original Krieger abstract painting on the cover and the kind of altered-scale-tinged melodic heads one might associate with players like John Scofield, Kurt Rosenwinkel or even Zappa, whom Krieger pays homage to on a blazing cover of “Chunga’s Revenge.” It features wicked horn/guitar harmonies and a wild free-form solo that recalls Zappa’s SG- through-a-parked-wah tone and the almost-dissonant flurries and fuzz arcs of Krieger’s solo on the Doors’ “When the Music’s Over.”

“It was very collaborative on Ritual,” Krieger says. “Much more so than my earlier solo albums, like [1989’s] No Habla or [2010’s]