Post by Doom Girl on Oct 19, 2019 21:00:48 GMT
Oct 19, 2019 20:50:47 GMT Doom Girl said:
In this post is the text (from the U.S. magazine Down Beat, of December 30, 1965), of a review of a club date (at the Village Gate) by Coltrane on November 10, 1965. Trane, with his Ascension record date and with the augmented quartet he uses in the clubs, is not only creating a band with more power than Con Ed but is also introducing some of the best of the New Jazz musicians to the World of the Living Wage and, thereby, performing a double service. Shepp and Saunders, by virtue of the discomforting weight of their music, get precious few gigs, and Coltrane, by presenting their music in its proper musicological context, is performing a great service to their generation. Both these men have highly distinctive styles. They really sound nothing like Coltrane, but it is clear that they have benefited from Coltrane’s line, harmonics, and dissection of a song’s melody.
On this night, the two sets consisted of long interpretations of one tune each: Afro Blue and Out of This World. The difference between the two sets was that Jones didn’t show for the first. And the first was, to my ear, far better.
Coltrane played the theme on soprano, and Shepp, in very good voice, took it from there. Shepp’s style is reiterative – a kind of supercharged theme and variation. He stated a motif, broke it down to its elements, and returned to it every few bars. After carrying one idea through innumerable permutations he would start another. Shepp is a bluesy player who roars his masculinity. He plays at both ends of the horn, and he may spot his intensities at any part of the register. He makes heavy inflections on the notes he wants to emphasize. His opening solo, about 10 minutes long, was a strong one, as it had to be, for this is deep water.
This was the first time I’d heard Panamanian altoist Ward. He seemed to be neither a screamer nor a singer, but a talker. He seemed to be engaged in some kind of dialog with himself, playing a rapid series of terse, self-contained, but related phrases. I liked Ward; his ear is different. I couldn’t sort out his influences in this cauldron, however, and I look forward to hearing him in a smaller group.
Saunders followed Ward, and he is the damnest tenor player in the English language. He went on for minute after minute in a register that I didn’t know the tenor had (actually, I did – I’ve heard Saunders before). Those special effects that most tenor men use only in moments of high orgiastic excitement are the basic premises of his presentation. His use of overtones, including a cultivated squeak that parallels his line, is constantly startling. He plays way above the upper register; long slurred lines and squeaky monosyllabic staccatos, and then closes with some kind of Bushman’s nursery rhyme. Pharoah is ready, and you’ll all be hearing from him soon. Or should.
Trane soloed on soprano which, as usual, seemed a few months behind his tenor. Here in this reed chorus, it had the effect of stretching out the sonic boom.
The orchestral composition of the group had been expanding all along. No one was ever idle – a man would finish his solo and pick up a rattle, tambourine, or some other rhythm instrument and start shaking away. The reeds were also free to provide filler or comment for the soloist, and the effect was of an active, highly charged environment. With the constantly shifting rhythms of Rashid on drums this was free large-group improvisation at its best. Rashid’s playing is an ever flowing patter that defies time signature. He once said that he was after a drone effect that flowed with the horns. At the Gate, he showed how well he achieves this effect.
Garrison’s bass was strong and witty, and Tyner’s chords are necessarily more dissonant than before.
The difference in the second set was, to me, the unnecessary addition of Jones. It was interesting to hear this band with Rashid, who, unlike Jones, disperses the rhythm centers. It has always been an awe-ful, pleasurable experience to have Elvin tear up my nervous system for me. I have also heard two drummers used with laudable results, e.g., the intimate communication of Billy Higgins and Ed Blackwell in Ornette Coleman’s monumental Free Jazz LP and some work Rashid did with another drummer in a Sun Ra concert.
I think I see what Coltrane wants – an ever evolving groundswell of energy that will make the musical environment so dangerous that he and the others will have to improvise new weapons constantly to beat back all the Brontosaurs. However, if Jones is to be one of the two drummers, then Lincoln Center at least is needed to contain and separate all that sound. One simply couldn’t hear anything but drums on Out of This World. I had no idea what the soloists were saying, and I doubt that the players could hear each other. Garrison(who played a truly virtuoso solo to open the second set) was completely swallowed up. At one point, I saw Coltrane break out a bagpipe (another demon in the forest) and blow into it, but damned if I heard a note of what he played.
Note: Coltrane played bass clarinet in some ensemble sections. I was told that the instrument had belonged to Eric Dolphy and had been given to Coltrane by Dolphy’s mother. - A. B. Spellman