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Between Nothingness & Eternity

live album by Mahavishnu Orchestra

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 4, 2026
Entity authorityQ3639204 ↗
Source-derived summary

Between Nothingness & Eternity is the first live album by jazz fusion band Mahavishnu Orchestra, released in November 1973 by Columbia Records. According to the Mahavishnu Orchestra Gigs listing by Walter Kolosky, it was recorded live at the Schaefer Music Festival, held in Central Park, New York, on August 17 and 18, 1973, even though available recordings indicate that all of the material from the album was taken from the second night only. Originally, Mahavishnu Orchestra's third album was to be a studio effort, recorded in June 1973 at Trident in London, but was scrapped during the final days of the project; the live album, containing versions of three of the original six tracks, was released instead as the last album during the period of the original line-up of the band. The original studio album was released in 1999 as The Lost Trident Sessions.

Between Nothingness & Eternity was included in 2011 as part of The Complete Columbia Albums Collection boxed set, along with the other albums by the first line-up of the band, including The Lost Trident Sessions. This new version was a new different mix with an additional minute of music on "Sister Andrea". The boxed set also contained an album called Unreleased Tracks from Between Nothingness & Eternity, which contains other selections from the two Central Park shows.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Between Nothingness & Eternity” is live album by Mahavishnu Orchestra. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Between, Nothingness and Eternity, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1973, 1999, 2011—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1973. For this dossier, Between, Nothingness and Eternity is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “live album by Mahavishnu Orchestra” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3639204. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1973, 1999 and 2011.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Between Nothingness & Eternity”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Between Nothingness & Eternity primary sources, Between Nothingness & Eternity archive and Between research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Between Nothingness & Eternity”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Between Nothingness & Eternity” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.