Amazon.co.uk Review
If Summers' gigs in the late 1990s fell short of expectations, Green Chimneys, his 1999 Monk tribute, showed great improvement, and the progress continues in this homage to Mingus. His line playing is still occasionally a little halting, but he has some very respectable solos on "Opus 3", "Cumbia Jazz Fusion" and "Free Cell Block F" and there are also sterling contributions from Randy Brecker, Hank Roberts, Deborah Harry and others. Above all though, the album's success flows from the same arranging intelligence Summers brought to The Police 20 years ago. The old chestnut "Goodbye Porkpie Hat" is about the only suggestion of cliché, with a string quartet arrangement of "Myself" showing the breadth of the leader's imagination. Fellow policeman Sting showed an interest in jazz after leaving the service, but as this richly varied and entertaining set shows, Summers, free of the pressures of stardom, has been the one to more fully explore the music. --Mark Gilbert

Description
After successfully trying his hand at interpreting the compositions of Thelonious Monk with GREEN CHIMNEYS, ex-Police guitarist Andy Summers stretches his musical experimentation even further with PEGGY'S BLUE SKYLIGHT, a collection of Charles Mingus' works. Whereas Monk was quirky and introverted,Mingus was often brash and expansive. Summers, given his unusually creative musical background, does a grand job of interpreting these heady pieces in his own idiosyncratic fashion.
Right off the bat, Summers makes a bold reading of "Boogie Stop Shuffle" as a lazy reggae lope. Always having beenone to create mesmerising atmospheres out of which he forges creative slants on his musical subjects, Summers' esotericsettings for "Reincarnation Of a Lovebird", "Goodbye Porkpie Hat/Where Can a Man Find Peace?" and "Myself When I Am Real" are ample proof of the guitarist's inspiration. Other more conventional readings in this rich experiment include "Cumbia Jazz Fusion", with its deep samba groove, and Deborah Harry's sultry version of "Weird Nightmare".

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews   Beautiful, dark & daring instrumental ingenuity., 8 Jan 2002 By  aking@eaeurope.com (London) - See all my reviews    I for one am guilty of neglecting Mr Summers (quite distinguished) career after his departure from The Police, and I apologise to him. Time to put things in order. Like Sting (one wonders who got the idea/inspiration first), Andy has spent a lot of time expanding his musical palette and exploring jazz. This doesn't surprise me. With talents always obviously well above the demands of pop, jazz offers the more and accomplished & serious musician a greater challenge and fewer boundaries (not to say commercial considerations). Having explored the work of Theolonius Monk on 1999 's Green Chimneys, as if that wasn't a big enough challenge (I would suggest Monk is one of the greatest and complex jazz composers of all time), Peggy's Blue Skylight contains all covers of the enigmatic Charles Mingus, and, refreshingly, the slightly more obscure side of the man too. Working with such renowned and diverse musicians as trumpeter Randy Brecker, the Kronos Quartet, Deborah Harry, rapper Q Tip and Jazz Passengers Curtis Fowlkes, Roy Nathanson and Rob Thomas, this is Mingus with a contemporary slant, and an amazing variety of styles and influences; reggae, rock, funk, gypsy jazz, R&B, chamber music, tango and conga. Often times beautiful, sometimes dark, the creative daring and instrumental ingenuity showed in both Andy's arrangements and playing is stunning, the rhythmic & melodic complexity and stylistic diversity of his music showing that while these are not his compositions, he has clearly found his own sense of the music and done himself considerable justice.  Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this)   Err, different, yet great!!, 22 Feb 2001 By A Customer Yet again Andy Summers manages to push the boundaries of what should be listened to to even greater heights. I keep looking back to "The Golden Wire&quo