The Free Jazz Collective

Sunny Murray/Sabu Toyozumi - Sun’s Blessings (Nobusiness Records, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 05:00:00 +0000

Ah, what gifts music offers us! Forgive such a banal intro, but it's the first thought that comes to mind just by having an album like this in our hands, even before listening to it. We're faced with a true Clash of the Titans, or rather, a Clash of the Eras that gives rise to a historical moment. The date is April 4, 1999, and the host of this "Rumble In The Mountain" is Hokkaido, Sapporo's Zippy Hall, a small venue with a capacity of 130 (lucky them…) people.

On one side of the ring, from Idabel, Oklahoma, James Marcellus Arthur "Sunny" Murray, embodying the Classic Period of our music and the incredible epic that permeated it. Among the first, along with Milford Graves, to unchain the drums from purely rhythmic tasks and push them to explore uncharted timbral textures, Murray was the sword arm of Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler, with whom he recorded At The Café Montmartre and Spiritual Unity, two albums that moved The Clock forward 20 years, to which it is ontologically impossible to attribute any star. His collaborations with Archie Shepp, Dave Burrell, Arthur Doyle, and David Murray are extraordinary, while his hyper saturated solo release Sonny’s Time Now, (Ayler, Cherry, Grimes and Worrell to complete the monstrous line-up), is in the Hall of Fame of our all-time favorites. “One of those crucial figures in jazz who appear just when they are needed”, said Val Wilmer about him.

On the opposite side of the square, from Yokohama, Japan, sits Yoshisaburo “Sabu” Toyozumi, an affiliate, together with Kaoru Abe, Masayuki Takayanagi, Masahiko Togaghi, Masahiko Sato and Mototeru Takagi, with the Sonic Terrorists Squad that pushed free music where no one thought it was possible. We've always liked to think that, if the Free of the '60s was the punk of jazz, the subsequent European school was its hardcore declination, but from the Land of the Rising Sun they pulverized even this, going further, much further. Since you're here, this is probably a redundant suggestion, but if by chance you haven't already, by all means get Soejima Teruto's book Free Jazz in Japan: A Personal History, an unmissable account of that period and those fearless characters. In 1971, Toyozumi became the first non-American member of the AACM and in the following years actively participated in inviting some of his Masters, such as Broetzmann, Bailey, Mengelberg, and Murray himself, to play in Japan. The Clash of Sapporo, which unfolds through two songs, "Mischievous Saga" and "Brave Warriors," is not wrestling, it's a real fight between top-notch Heavyweights, punching with nothing but their drums and cymbals, no other instruments, no post-production.

While we'd listened to (without being too keen on) a few solo drums records, an outfit like this represents an absolute novelty for us, one that has won us over unconditionally. Don't get misled by figuring out an individual, sterile show of strength, since here we have by both the contenders, the clear, shared aim to join forces to generate a brand new Mega Rhythm. It would be perhaps a sterile exercise to talk about interplay between two drummers, but what emerges from the album in an absolutely compelling way is the willingness (there's no need to waste a single syllable on their skills, obviously) of the two Champions to mutually find common ground, within dynamics that are sometimes seismic, sometimes more delicate (relatively speaking...), or to leave part of these spaces to the other, in a smooth and natural way, without the listener feeling like one of them is putting down the drumsticks for a while.

Not easy listening for sure, but Forum’s readers will certainly have no problems tackling this 65 minutes of challenging music from a one of a kind, extraordinary album. No ifs or buts.

Lao Dan and Vasco Trilla @ Old Heaven Books

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 05:00:00 +0000

While doing a little browsing about the NoBusiness record label's website, this video jumped out - a performance by the masterful musicians Lao Dan and Vasco Trilla (woodwinds and percussion, respectively). The duo released a recording together on the label called New Species in 2025 and this performance was captured at Old Heaven Books in Shenzhen, China.

The first two video's of the performance are shared here, in which we first encounter Lao Dan playing a traditional Chinese clarinet-like instrument, followed by part two where he switches wooden flute. The later links to parts 3 and 4 lead to Trilla's Youtube channel where the saxophone come into play.

Part 1

Part 2

See: Part 3 & Part 4

Ivo Perelman and Matt Shipp - Duologues 7: Distillation (Squid Note, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sat, 24 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Sammy Stein

Pianist Matthew Shipp and tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman have developed a three-decade-long musical relationship where both musicians explore improvisation in a collaboration that continues to develop. Each of them plays with different musicians and continues on their individual musical journey, but when they come together, the distillation of the experience results in an ever-developing relationship and one where each allows the other to bring whatever new ideas they have to the table, no matter if these are predictable or unexpected, disruptive, and revelatory.

As they continually circle back to each other and record, the language of their music changes in subtle ways. Both musicians have played alongside and collaborated with many other musicians, while they remain powerfully individual; their shared knowledge shines through in their collaborations.

What comes of three decades or more of collaboration is an immediacy of reaction and interaction – a kind of musical telepathy that is difficult to capture but is apparent to the listener. Neither always leads nor always follows, but both revel in shifting emphasis, nuances that only come from playing with someone over time. This is reflected by the way one will introduce a new idea, or pathway, and the other will reflect the same idea, not as imitation but as recognition – a deep, intuitive echo.

Their playing has become not so much a conversation, as is often the case between improvising musicians listening intently to each other, but is more of a shared delivery, a unanimous development of ideas shared with the listener.

Both have worked in larger configurations, but the saxophone-piano duo reveals each at their most exposed and far from the prosaic. Their previous projects have shown their duo evolution from different perspectives, demonstrating how freely improvised music can acquire coherence not through predetermined structure but through accumulated trust, memory and intense listening.

Duologue 7: Distillation sees Perelman and Shipp back in the exposed, elemental setting of just piano and sax and one-take sessions of completely improvised recordings that give enough material for two CDs. There is no need to explain; there is just the music and the melodic fragments, insertions of traditional tunes alongside completely improvised phrases, silence (which is used so effectively), rhythmic pattern changes, sudden register switches, and a duologue that at times is expressed almost as voices rather than music, as both musicians find the full range of their instruments.

With Shipp and Perelman, there is no revisiting history, no repeating of anything that has gone before, but a new dialogue each time, bringing with it the familiar rhythmic intensity, changes, and multi-register expression, but also new ideas, perhaps picked up in the time they spend apart in other projects, and they challenge, support and improvise alone as feels right, communicating their deep and long-lasting collaboration but also offering the listener a new take on just how good music can be with no score.

The two-CD set comprises nine tracks on disc 1 and ten on disc two, numbered, as ever, track 1-9 (disc 1) and 10-19 (disc 2), and there is something for every Shipp or Perelman aficionado – or anyone with a love of freely improvised music. From the gentleness and conversational tone of track 1, where the music evolves from a to and fro to a gentle, swingy back and forth with fewer spaces between responses, to the classical-meets-improvised styles on track 3, or the intensity and depth of Track 4, the playfulness of track 5 or the divergent parts of Track 9, there is a lot to take in. On Disc 2, the explorative quality of the music is more evident, with Perelman setting up ideas more on this second part of the release. On Tracks 10 to 14, Perelman travels some unconventional roads on tenor sax with Shipp supporting, and then in Track 15 it is Shipp who dictates the atmosphere and thematic tone of the number.

Distillation is a CD set that invites exploration and several listens. You can hear the classical leanings of both musicians, but also the application of known musical concepts to create improvised music that comes not just from an idea in the brain but is coupled with a sound understanding of how tonality and relativity of the notes and parts affect the outcome.

This is improvised music in its truest form, not so much a musical relationship, but an ever-evolving force.

Duologues 7: Distillation by Ivo Perelman and Matthew Shipp

Other Galaxies : an interview with DoYeon Kim

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

DeYeon Kim. Photo by Hyun Park

By David Cristol

Following in the footsteps of traditionnally-trained, pioneering female Asian artists such as Japan's Michiyo Yagi and Miya Masaoka (specialists of the cumbersome koto) and China's Min Xiao-Fen (pipa, known for her duets with Derek Bailey) playing hard-to-tune instruments in free music contexts, DoYeon Kim has been a consistent presence on the scene in the past few years. A rigorously-educated virtuoso of the gayageum, a silk-string zither and variant of the Chinese guzheng, the Seoul-born musician moved to the USA to study and perform under the guidance of Joe Morris at the New England Conservatory. The acclaimed bassist/guitarist and educator helped open her ears and heart to the great wide world of contemporary composition and improvisation, from Anton Webern to Anthony Braxton, and encouraged her to find her voice. Her appetite for encounters, stunning-sounding instrument, intense vocals and theatrical flair took the scene by storm. She's played and recorded with a wide array of key artists : Cooper-Moore, Peter Evans, Satoshi Takeishi, Cyro Baptista, Brandon Lopez, Lesley Mok, Sonia Belaya, Tomas Fujiwara, Matt Mitchell, Michael Bisio as well as Europeans Elias Stemeseder & Christian Lillinger (on Intakt's "Umbra" and Plaist's "Antumbra"), these searching minds eager to marry their sounds to the distinctive ones of that most singular of apparatuses, performed by such a powerhouse individual. 2026 saw Kim's visibility increase, with performances at major festivals and the release of her debut album as a bandleader, on jazz label Tao Forms. On stage, seated cross-legged in traditional robes, she makes audiences feel like taking part in a ritual. Amidst a hefty touring schedule, the artist tells the Free Jazz Collective about her journey so far.

Photo by Hillel Kim

Could you start by telling our readers about your instrument and training?

The gayageum has been used in both court music and folk traditions. The 12-string court gayageum and the 12-string sanjo gayageum are different in their construction, playing techniques, and musical traditions, even though both have 12 strings. There are also modernized versions such as the 18-string and 25-string gayageum. I attended the National Korean Music High School, a specialized high school for Korean traditional music, and later majored in Korean traditional music at Seoul National University, so I was trained to play and understand these different forms of the instrument.

Does your playing in free music situations maintain a link to the traditional ways of playing the gayageum? Do you see it as an expansion or a departure from those traditions?

It could be seen as an expansion of tradition, or perhaps even as exploring new territory, but I don’t really think about it that way when I play. What I focus on is what I want to say, what it means to me, and how I can communicate it as clearly and honestly as possible. For me, it’s simply a way of expressing myself through the instrument. Whether that is an expansion of tradition or a departure from it, I’m not sure. Either way to perceive it, from a listener's point of view, is valid.

Are you composing and reading from Western sheet music writing conventions, when playing the gayageum?

Yes. I read Western staff notation, usually using the grand staff. I also compose using Western notation when I write for the gayageum, although I sometimes adapt the notation to capture certain nuances of the instrument and my playing technique. I started out learning the piano and reading from scores, and am still studying scores by XXth century composers, from Bartók to Morton Feldman.

At Joe's Pub, NY, 8 July 2025. Photo by Melanie Mor

Are your vocals connected to the Korean tradition, or does it come from another influence?

Honestly, I’m not sure. I never had any formal vocal training, so I just sing according to what I hear, feel, and imagine. I don’t consciously think about whether it comes from Korean tradition or free jazz. It’s probably a combination of all the music I’ve heard and experienced, and ultimately I just try to follow my own instincts. While in middle and high school, whenever we finished a midterm or final exam, my friends and I would go to karaoke to release all the stress. I would just scream my heart out - maybe that was part of my vocal training after all.

This year you played at New York's Winter Jazz Fest, Vision Festival, Jazztopad New York edition, Knoxville's Big Ears, and released your first album as a bandleader. How do you handle all the activity?

I feel grateful for all of it. And I don’t think any of this could have happened through my efforts alone. Whit Dickey and Steven Joerg at Tao Forms have believed in my music and supported me a lot, which made it possible for my first album as a bandleader to come into the world. And with Tyshawn Sorey, Mat Maneri and Henry Fraser, who play on the album, my ideas and what I wanted to express came through fully and honestly. My manager Matt Merewitz has also been working hard behind the scenes to promote my music, along with many other people who have helped me along the way. All of the opportunities have come from people who have believed in my music and invited me into their spaces. I’m deeply grateful to everyone who has trusted me enough to invite me to be part of festivals and communities. And thanks to all of this, I’ve been able to meet so many wonderful new people - I’m grateful for these unexpected and precious connections that music continues to bring into my life.

My favorite track on your album is the epic Linear System. You seem connected with nature and the elements, from the album cover to song titles. Where does your inspiration come from?

That means a lot to me. Human beings are part of nature, and that idea is deeply connected to the way I think about the gayageum. If you look inside the sound box of the gayageum, the backboard is traditionally associated with the sky, the human, and the earth. Isn’t that beautiful? The sound feels like it connects the sky to the earth, with the human being the bridge between them. I think of music in a similar way—as something that is part of this larger natural world and connects us to something beyond ourselves. That’s why, as you noticed, the album cover also has this image of the sky, the human, and the earth. The river in the photograph is actually the sound box of the gayageum, and the snow reflects both the sky and the earth. Everything is connected. After the pandemic, I started thinking a lot about making music that wasn’t only about myself, but that could connect me to the world around and other people. As I followed that thought, I began to feel that music and the natural world were somehow one and the same.

Isn't there a tone discrepancy between the gayageum and Western instruments - and did you call on Mat Maneri because he's an expert of micro-tonalities and would bridge the two worlds?

The first time I heard Mat play, his sound felt incredibly familiar. The way he plays around the pitch, bends notes, and moves between different shades of sound felt natural to my ears. Beyond that, his energy, charisma and expressiveness always move me deeply. So I didn’t really choose him simply because I thought he could bridge the tuning systems of the gayageum and Western instruments. I wasn’t thinking about the relationship between the two tuning systems that much, but about Mat as a person and as a musician. His music is so compelling to me, and I simply wanted to make music with him. I felt the same way about Tyshawn and Henry. I wasn’t choosing them because they could solve a particular musical problem. I was drawn to who they are as musicians and people, and wanted to hear what would happen when we played together.

Photo by Alex Joseph

Rhythm is often neglected or discarded by free improvisers, but is definitely present in your work. What's your relationship to rhythm and music genres that have a lot of rhythm?

Because I pluck and strike the strings with my right hand, there’s naturally a very percussive quality to the sound of the gayageum. The physical act of playing the instrument itself creates rhythm, so rhythm has always been very deeply connected to the way I play. For me, rhythm actually comes before melody. Rhythm is one of the most fundamental and instinctive forms of human communication. Before we even have words or melodies, there is something very powerful about a pulse, a repetition, a gesture, or a physical movement that allows us to connect with one another. So I see rhythm almost as a natural human language. Rhythm feels fundamental to me, whether I’m improvising freely or working with repetition, grooves, or other rhythmically driven music.

Last summer you played in New York and toured Europe in a trio with Kris Davis and Tom Rainey. How did that go?

Touring with Kris and Tom was an incredible experience. I learned a lot from them, felt very alive on stage and felt a sense of infinite possibility in the music. Kris created a supportive environment that allowed me to focus on the gayageum and explore what I could do with it. As both a bandleader and a mentor, she gave me a lot of generous advice and encouragement. The tour became something I will never forget. European audiences were warm and open, people seemed to genuinely enjoy the music and were very curious about it. The meaningful conversations we had made me feel that we were connecting as human beings, through the music, reminding me why I make music in the first place.

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"I first heard DoYeon Kim when we played an informal trio session with Tom Rainey at my practice studio. We clicked immediately musically, and I was struck by her energy, joyfulness as a player, and the command and expressive range she has on her instrument. I looked for an opportunity to include her in a project and invited her to guest on my record "Spirit, Fire Fact". At first, I had envisioned her as part of the centerpiece, Splitting Silent Stars, which I hold dear because it was composed in memory of my father, who passed away in 2024. The piece is very much about the knottiness of grief and letting go, and it is speech-like in parts. DoYeon Kim’s playing seemed to have just the right combination of wild abandon, spirituality, and gentleness that I needed. Once we started working on it, I enjoyed it so much that she became part of the rest of the album as well—often doubling the guitar to create a kind of augmented string instrument. I have since played DoYeon’s music as well, which is visceral, guttural, and elegant at the same time. I look forward to more opportunities to work together." (Ingrid Laubrock)

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DoYeon Kim, Chris Tordini, Anna Webber, Ryan Easter, Ingrid Laubrock,
Yuma Uesaka, Ches Smith, Mary Halvorson, David Virelles.
Photo by TF Huff (Intakt Records)

How did you meet with Ingrid Laubrock and first played together?

During the pandemic, I discovered Ingrid’s music through her album Blood Moon (Intakt, 2020) with Kris Davis, and became interested in her playing. After I moved to New York, I started going to her performances, and eventually had an opportunity to play with Tom Rainey, which led to meeting Ingrid.

How did Ingrid adapt to the specifics of the instrument, when composing?

I think she approached the piece in a special way. Rather than focusing primarily on the specific characteristics or limitations of the gayageum, she trusted me as a musician and wrote for me as DoYeon. In a way, because she didn’t try to fit the composition into a specific “gayageum framework”, I had more freedom to express myself and bring my own musical language to the piece. It felt less like adapting the instrument to a composition and more like creating a space where the instrument, the music, and I could meet naturally.

Can you tell us about the upcoming "Spirit, Fire, Fact" album, and how do you feel about playing those compositions live?

I feel honored to be part of that new album by Ingrid, it still feels a little surreal to me. The album carries the care, passion, and love of every musician who was involved in it. Tom Rainey, Brandon Seabrook, and Shawn Lovato are all musicians I admire and love listening to, and it was a great pleasure to make music together. Everyone was deeply committed from their own position, and ideas could emerge freely among us. Ingrid, as a leader, was open and flexible in receiving those ideas, while at the same time being extremely clear about her own foundation and what she wanted the music to be. Watching her lead with such flexibility and clarity taught me a great deal. I also love that the energy of the music changes when we play it live. Something new happens between the musicians and the audience in the moment. I’m thrilled to bring this music to Switzerland [at the unerhört festival in Zürich] and experience what happens with it live. Ingrid’s playing is extraordinary, of course, but I also like that her character and humanity are enclosed in her compositions. I had listened to her music and looked at her scores before, but playing her music and experiencing it from inside the ensemble allowed me to feel those qualities on a deeper and more personal level.

At the same festival you're scheduled to do a workshop.

It will be my first time visiting Zürich and meeting the students at the University of the Arts. I hope I can share something from my own experience with them, and learn new perspectives from them as well. I will also be performing some of the pieces from "Wellspring" with them.

What are your next projects and collaborations?

I’m thinking about four projects right now. The first is an expansion of the DoYeon Kim Quintet. I’ve already written music around the Five Stages of Grief, and I’d like to develop that material into a much larger project, with choir, tuba, trombone, trumpet, violin, cello, bass, percussion, gayageum, and voice. I’d also love to make a video alongside the recording, so that the project can exist not only as an album but also as a visual work.

The second project is quite different. I'm planning on creating music using electronic sounds with gayageum, drums, and voice. I think you’ll hear a completely different energy and another side of my musical world.

The third is a string trio I’ve started with Gabby Fluke-Mogul and Lester Saint-Louis. This group is focused on improvisation.

The fourth is a collaboration with a string quartet called The Rhythm Method. They commissioned me to write a new piece for gayageum and string quartet, which we’ll perform next year. What makes this project exciting is that it won’t just be about playing music — the performance will also include acting, singing, and movement. I’m looking forward to exploring how all of these elements can come together on stage.

What musicians are you listening to at the moment and can you name one you'd like to play with?

I’m currently listening to Thomas Strønen’s music, whom I recently had a chance to play with. I’m also a big fan of Barry Guy, whom I had the chance to play with in Barcelona in 2019, and I remember being completely captivated when he played his solo. He played so beautifully that, for a moment, I almost forgot that I was also performing. Given the opportunity, I would love to play with him again.

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Latest releases :

DoYeon Kim - Wellspring (Tao Forms, 2026)

Anna Webber - It's easier to imagine the end of the world... (Intakt, 2026)

Ingrid Laubrock's Grammy Season - Spirit, Fire, Fact (Intakt, 2026) (December)

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Live :

Mark Dresser Gradience Quartet

Oct 23 : Angel City Jazz Festival, Los Angeles (US)

Oct 28 : University of California, San Diego (US)

Nick Dunston's Spider Season

Nov 10 : Stony Brook Festival, New York (US)

DoYeon Kim solo

Nov 14 : Rockit Festival, Groningen (NL)

DoYeon Kim & Sun-mi Hong

Nov 16 : Pocket Concerts, Utrecht (NL)

DoYeon Kim Quartet

Nov 21: Jazztopad Festival, Wroclaw (PL)

DoYeon Kim & Workshopband ZHdK

Nov 26 : unerhört! Jazzfestival, Zürich (CH)

Ingrid Laubrock's Grammy Season

Nov 27 : unerhört! Jazzfestival, Zürich (CH)

Florian Arbenz, Greg Osby, and Bill Frisell - Quiet Lights (Hammer Recordings, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Brian Earley

Swiss born drummer/percussionist Florian Arbenz has spent much of his time in the post-pandemic years working to join peoples of different ages, cultures, and genres together. His Conversation LAB, which serves as the philosophical groundwork of this release, posits “respect,” for “diversity and a spirit of togetherness, both in music and in society,” ideals that have become all but illegal in the United States in 2026, as well as in some parts of Europe, Asia, and South America. Here in the United States, our administration just proposed new laws that would financially punish secondary schools and universities if they “provide targeted support to minority students” according to a USA Todayreport, and even bike lanes have been officially assailed as supporting diversity and equity too much, a statement which sounds laughable until one sees that this logic stripped away over one billion dollars of funding.

The voice of Arbenz and other active artists are needed at this moment more than ever in my lifetime. And, for this project Florian Arbenz, who hails from Basel, Switzerland, has brought together guitarist Bill Frisell, a white man from Denver by way of Baltimore, with saxophonist Greg Osby, a black man from St. Louis. There should be nothing radical about this, and we cannot allow our bars of social expectation to sink so low that this seems a departure from normalcy. It is not 1960, but even in that year it should not have been an act of moral resistance for Dave Brubeck to refuse to tour without bassist Eugene Wright.

For this lovely album Arbenz utilizes lessons he learned in Havana, Cuba years ago, and, to a lesser extent on this particular project, rhythmic techniques from Western Asia and India. Quiet Lights opens with a “rhumba-inspired” song penned by Arbenz titled “Homenaje.” There is so much peace in this work, that I have found myself listening to its at times longingly sad, at times soaringly optimistic, timbre over and over. The work begins with Arbenz playing a complicated rhythmic pattern on drum-kit and custom-made percussion tools. As is common throughout the album, Arbez does not abandon time, but he doesn’t exactly play it metronomically either, instead opening up percussive and rhythmic air that allow Osby and Frisell to sail like a breeze through the upper stories of a temple. The four minute mark on this piece, for example, contains so much human-musical information that, if for only a moment, joy is alive and manifest.

There are several other highlights on this album. One is found in the second song, “Chant.” This, like every other piece on the album save one, is again composed by Arbenz, who claims he is “inspired by Max Roach’s vision of the drummer as composer.” “Chant” commits one of the drummer’s most radical moves as a percussionist: his drums are barely audible as he allows Osby’s floating saxophone and Frisell’s ethereal legato guitar to fill the room. “Lueget vo Berg und Tal,” a traditional Swiss song, again features cymbals and bells played with quiet intimacy as Frisell drifts in liquid time.

The closer “Rhumba” features more kinetic and energetic drumming from Arbenz. Here, he creates an array of rhythmic templates that Osby and Frisell collectively use as a counterpoint to their own adventurous improvisations. Arbenz has stated that the Conversation LAB approach, while using form and clarity, should focus on spontaneous creation and the musicians should be “authentic” and “truly unique.” “Rhumba” perhaps demonstrates this concept more completely than any other part of the recording.

In closing I will say the silent part out loud. I am well aware that Greg Osby is a divisive musician for readers of the FJC. Frisell and Arbenz are also names that one does not immediately associate with free jazz. However, while portions of this album are clearly in the pocket, all three creators work in beautiful moments full of impromptu colorations and communal development. There are no overdubs whatsoever. Nearly every track is a first take, and the entire album was recorded in four hours one afternoon in September. There is something reassuring, calming even, about the close listening and spontaneous responses of the musicians here. I might even add the word hopeful. Quiet Lights is, at the very least, worth an open-minded listen.

One can listen to Quiet Lights here:

QUIET LIGHTS by Florian Arbenz, Greg Osby, Bill Frisell

Tom Challenger & Evan Parker - May Spring Last A Lifetime (False Walls, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Dan Sorrells

I won't spend much time describing the sound of May Spring Last A Lifetime. It is a searching, bursting 53 minute duet of tenor saxophones, one of which is played by Evan Parker, recorded in pristine clarity in Ramsgate. It may be worth noting that, at 81, Parker's had a long enough recording career that this isn't the first (or even fifth) tenor duet put to tape, Parker having spared with other tenors wielded by the likes of Anthony Braxton, Joe McPhee, John Tchicai, Hans Koch, and Urs Leimgruber. Here, his partner is Tom Challenger (quite a surname given the context!), a significantly younger musician who is a familiar face on the London scene, playing with musicians like Olie Brice and Kit Downes and in groups like Brass Mask. Challenger is an admirable match for Parker, and both players stick closely to each other through gradual turns of technique and dynamics. Above all, there is space for things to develop.

In the five or so years between Challenger and Parker's first meeting and the recording of May Spring Last A Lifetime, the two developed an informal process where they would meet with their tenors, pausing between bouts of playing to talk about their instruments and the music they were making. In the extended and wonderful conversation in the liner notes between Challenger, Parker, and False Walls label head CJ Mitchell, Challenger says that what felt significant about their duo was that, having "no goal of performance" for so many years, it felt like practice. Parker points out that "practice" is a "complicated" word, and what concerns the two is not practice in the sense of repetitively mastering the "how" of playing the instrument, but rather in approaching the "how" of playing together. Challenger characterizes this practice as the "joint activity" of "discover[ing] that you're not in control," "playing something when you're not really sure of what you're doing" and trying "to figure out what the hell that is."

As the conversation winds on, something possibly controversial is revealed: May Spring Last A Lifetime is not a single take of a herculean imaginative feat. It captures a typical meeting between the two, but has the pauses, the conversations, the breaks to change reeds removed. And not only are these gaps omitted, but Challenger has then rearranged the musical pieces. In an era where the perennial debate about the legitimacy or authenticity of recordings of improvised music has largely receded, and where there are more recordings than any one lifetime could survey, I'll admit to still bristling at this revelation. (For his part, Parker also seemed skeptical at first—or at the very least, like such an idea simply wouldn't have occurred to him). As I read on, Challenger's explanation was compelling, so much so that I think the choice becomes one of the most interesting things about May Spring Last A Lifetime. It stipulates that, yes, of course fidelity to a long-since-evaporated musical event is out of the question. But what if that's somehow more true to our experience?

Put plainly, Challenger says that the "purest perception" he has of recording with Parker, "of that event, is my memory." Only in the first order experience of the music in the moment that it happened can one be said to (maybe) have some sort of undiluted access. Even that is as evanescent as the notes themselves, immediately mediated. Everything after each vanishing instant is memory: inevitably shuffled, reordered, rendered diffuse. "The cool thing is that you can just change that perception in your head," says Challenger. This is how we engage with our memory. To alter the order of the music "isn't so problematic, because actually, when I think of it, I think of that memory, [and] I'm still reordering it all the time."

Sitting here, listening to a recording released long after the players vibrated the air in a room half the world away, I wonder what it is about Challenger's reconstruction that even caused the question of authenticity to enter my mind. Was it because I had a romanticized assumption about what I was hearing, and then the illusion was shattered? Do I really value something more about continuity or stamina than I do the actual engagement and creativity reflected in the music? Am I imposing some condition of purity on this document to assuage the guilt of having to encounter the music in this form? "You had to be there." But I wasn't. Is there something about Challenger reordering the pieces but concealing their seams that exhumes some dusty old bugbear, that maybe we haven't assimilated the troubles with recordings of free improvisation so much as repressed them?

It occurs to me that I've already encountered a version of all of this—and with Parker, to boot. Many years ago, I attended a performance of Parker, Nate Wooley, and Joe Morris that was later released as Ninth Square on Clean Feed. When I put that CD on, I recognize none of the music despite being mere feet from the players as it happened. My memories of the event have more to do with the setting and a sort of charged air of anticipation than with any kind of musical content. Ninth Squarehas six tracks—much like the six segments Challenger arranged into May Spring Last A Lifetime —and while several run one into the next, I couldn't possibly tell you whether those tracks accurately represented any portion of the two sets that were played that evening. What Challenger asks us to recognize is that these ambiguities and distortions are true for the people who make the music, too. We are all forced into reencounters that render things differently and newly. For all of us who weren't with Parker and Challenger in the Arco Barco studio, we're invited through Challenger's edits to partially occupy the perspective of one of the music's creators as they also turn it over in their mind.

Thinking about May Spring Last A Lifetime sent me to the bookshelf, where I pulled down David Grubbs' Records Ruin the Landscape,which delightfully mucks about in the same quagmire . I'm ruminating about these questions here because now, in a world awash in recordings of improvised music, a world where many listeners engage more frequently and more deeply with recordings than with live performance, there are very few albums that seem to dare us to contemplate how we engage with this music. The pleasures of sharing in what Parker and Challenger created together have little to do with chronological integrity. They are also not limited to those conveyed by physical presence. You don’t need to be aware of any of what I’ve discussed to partake in them. And if the way we encounter the music on May Spring Last A Lifetime is not quite true-to-life, it remains true to the spirit in which it was created, and—just as in Challenger's memory—the journey of two tenor saxophones becomes a contoured and nuanced surface and not merely the straight line between a start and a stop.

May Spring Last a Lifetime by Tom Challenger & Evan Parker

Henri Herteman, Michel Kristof, Claude Parle, Jean-Luc Petit - At the oasis (self-released, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Richard Blute

“Midnight at the oasis,
Send your camel to bed.”

-Maria Muldaur

Today we’re looking at the album At The Oasis from Henri Herteman on trombone and piano, Michel Kristof on guitar, Claude Parle on accordion, and Jean-Luc Petit on sax. I had previously reviewed the album Fisheye which had the same lineup except with Makoto Sato on drums rather than Petit. It was one of my favorite albums of 2025. So I hit play with a great deal of excitement. In Part.I, we’re treated to some vivid accordion from Parle. It’s the perfect introduction to the album. Then Petit jumps in with a bleat and some expressive soloing with just the right amount of overblowing. Herteman is on piano here urging the music forward in lieu of drums, and Kristof adds some droning, almost alien sounding atmospherics. They quickly build to a fine crescendo. It’s clear that the musicians are deeply invested in the music and really enjoy playing together.

Herteman opens Part.II on trombone. After a few questioning notes, Herteman announces his presence. A blast from the trombone is one of the great sounds of jazz and Herteman’s trombone playing throughout is a pure delight. Herteman and Petit have a wonderful dialogue on this piece. Kristof and Parle create a background that is sometimes disorienting and sometimes peaceful, in response to what their bandmates have to say.

I love listening to these musicians play together, since they successfully bridge the gap between a more textural style of free jazz and energy music. It takes very good musicians to be able to do this, and fortunately we have four.

Now I want everyone who remembers the 70s to admit it. You were humming “Midnight At The Oasis” while reading this review, weren’t you?

At the oasis by Henri Herteman, Michel Kristof, Claude Parle, Jean-Luc Petit

Gianni Gebbia - Petrichor (objet-a, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Ferruccio Martinotti

“To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is not to have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything”. (J.W. von Goethe)

If there's one artist who embodies the layered, cultured, and restless soul of Sicily, it's Gianni Gebbia. But beware, his musical lexicon is never a regionalist language, but always an extraordinary, challenging, universal Esperanto. Born in Palermo in 1961, he taught himself jazz by gaining experience in numerous Sicilian groups and orchestras and participating in jam sessions with passing American musicians. Like all men from the islands, he couldn't resist the call of the Horizon Line, and in 1980 he moved to New York, where he experienced the "no wave" movement and the last glimmers of the loft scene. During those same years, he attended the legendary University of the Streets on the Lower East Side, directed by saxophonist Muhammad Salahuddeen, before moving to Paris in 1984 to study with Jean-Claude Forenbach and Alan Silva. In 1990, he performed solo at the FMP “Total Music Meeting” in Berlin alongside musicians such as Steve Lacy and Lindsey Cooper, and since 1991, he has collaborated with German percussionist Guenter Baby Sommer and double bassist Peter Kowald, thus reuniting one of the most telluric duos of European free jazz. In 1993 he formed the folk-improv project “Terra Arsa” along with Vittorio Villa and singer Miriam Palma. In recent years, performances have been frequent alongside contemporary and butoh dancers (Masaki Iwana, Tadashi Endo, Antonio Carallo, Julie Stanzak, Yves Musard), poets (Alberto Masala), videomakers (Salvo Cuccia), film and theatre directors (Raul Ruiz, Roberto Andò, Jerome Savary, Guido Chiesa, Vanessa Redgrave, Heiner Goebbels, Aurelien Bory, Stefania Casini, Davide Riondino, Luca Guadagnino, Pina Bausch), visual artists (Toti Garraffa, Nicola Console, Martha Keller, Georgina Starr) and circus artists (Francois Chat, Vera Mormino). The collaborations in the musical field are impressive: Heiner Goebbels, David Moss, Zu, Otomo Yoshihide, Fred Frith, Anatoly Vapirov, Vladimir Tarasov, Jean Marc Montera, Dominique Regef, Louis Sclavis, Pino Minafra, Jim O' Rourke, Lee Ranaldo, Glen Velez, Benoit Delbecq, Noel Akchoté, Antonello Salis, Sergey Kuryokhin, Henri Kaiser, Michel Doneda, Takaoka Daysuke, Shin'ichi Isohata, Reiko Imanishi, Garth Powell, Evan Parker, Francesco Cusa, Domenico Sciajno, Butch Morris, Lukas Ligeti, Elliot Sharp, Shin'ichi Isohata, William Wynant, Satoko Fuji, Dominique Regef, Benoit Delbecq, Lawrence Butch Morris, Wadada Leo Smith, Milford Graves, to name some. Gebbia's ongoing projects in recent years include “Trionacria” alongside Roy Paci on trumpet and Francesco Cusa on drums,“Switters” with Francesco Cusa and Vince Vasi, and “Zen Widow” with Californians Garth Powell and Matt Goodheart. His solo work has continued steadily since 1990. In 2011, he played with Eiko Ishibashi, both in a duo and a trio with bassist Daniele Camarda. In 2013, he formed a new band, “Magnetic Trio”, with which, for his own label “objet-a”, he reinterprets all the compositions created from the 1980s to the present, as a sort of compendium of all his musical experiences. In 2020, he formed the open project "The Fruitful Darkness”, which features Massimo Pupillo and Tony Buck. In 2024, as “The Mayfield” (Heiner Goebbels, Willi Bopp, Cecile Lartigau, Nicolas Perrin, and Camille Emaille), he released an extraordinary album with Intakt Records. In recent years, he has begun studying and using Indian bansuri flutes in his performances, and he cultivates his study of Indian music, having attended courses with the renowned Maestro Hariprasad Chaurasia and his students Debopriya and Suchismita Chatterjee. This interest led to the solo albums “Vapor” and "Calor”, where Gebbia primarily uses the bansuri flute, and the same occurs in Petrichor. Titled with a neologism that combines the Greek words "Petra" (boulder, stone) and "Ichor" (sap), referring to the scent of rain on dry earth, the album unfolds across 11 tracks, all under three minutes, suspended between ambient atmospheres, micro-variations of sound, and sensorial perceptions. The textures of Indian wind instruments and electronics play with Eastern influences without folkloric shortcuts or implausible xerox-effects, but rather through a unique interpretation by someone who has embraced those cultural styles in their soul, even before than in their musical technique. In a single track ("Metabolico"), Gianni returns to the soprano saxophone, while the 11 minutes extended bonus track ("Zazeela") pays homage to Marian Zazeela (April 15, 1940-March 28, 2024), a New York-based artist and musician, member of the experimental music collective "Theater of Eternal Music," known for her collaboration with her husband, composer La Monte Young. For those who dug Shabaka's shakuhachi period but a really great record per se.

PETRICHOR by Gianni Gebbia

Sunday Video - Simon Rose solo

noreply@blogger.com (Stef Gijssels) — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 13:52:55 +0000

Our Sunday video this week offers a beautiful, intimate and well-recorded - both sound and editing - solo performance by British saxophonist Simon Rose, here on baritone. The video lasts only 20 minutes but is a great testimony for Rose's art: captivating, sensitive, explorative, adventurous, physical and as said, also intimate.

I can only advise readers to check out his albums we reviewed on our blog, starting with Vienna Solo, equally from 2024.

Performed at Acker Stadt Palast, Berlin. Curated by Volker Meitz, who also managed the sound and the mixing. Video recording: Florian Japp Editing: Per Jörgen Erkius.

Signe Emmeluth, Dag Erik Knedal Andersen, and Magnus Skavhaug Nergaard - Live at The All Ears Festival (Sonic Transmissions, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Brian Earley

Signe Emmeluth, the alto saxophonist/composer/band leader/new Danish Thing progenitor/and hyperdynamic cosmic dynamo, burns bright in 2026. I have written about the artist’s work on numerous occasions for the Free Jazz Collective, as have my colleagues (if you missed it and you dig Signe, you need to read this review of Emmeluth’s stunning recording with MoE and Ikuro Takahashi by William Rossi).

What more can Emmeluth give us? I mean, it seems every time I communicate with someone about her, superlatives in the realms of incredible, amazing, or even somehow unexpected are thrown about. My reaction to this may be to say that the English language falls short. These adjectives are not only deserved and accurate, but like all words, they absolutely fail to relay what makes her so special. In 2026 alone Signe has appeared on at least three albums I think may be the album of the year (I have in mind We Vote Force Majeure by Hyper Elastic Jinx, With Love by the Amoeba, and the aforementioned Live at Børsen Kulturhus with MoE and Ikuro Takahashi). She has appeared on numerous other works this year, and will appear on yet another recording with guitarist Karl Borja this coming October. And the range of these recordings is just as sweeping: experimental music versions of compositional suite, punk rock, and new age folk.

On this new release with bassist Magnus Skavhaug Nergaard and drummer/percussionist Dag Erik Knedal Andersen, Emmeluth finds herself this time in a pure free jazz context. What I mean by this is Live at All Ears documents three musicians playing with no prior plan. This is a live set including only one 37 minute take consisting essentially of two tracks. The three allow the music to develop organically in the moment through deep listening, inventive contributions, and intuitive communal connections.

The first of the two works presented here does the bulk of the heavy lifting. Running over 27 minutes, this piece demonstrates all of what these three make function so well. The work opens quietly, with Signe tonguing and repeating an impromptu motif built around a single bent, squeaky note. Knedal Andersen soon enters with bells and overtones from cymbals bowed with sticks. Skavhaug Nergaard simultaneously begins to pluck harmonics on his bass in the album’s first display of a kind of spontaneous communication that appears to fall somewhere between a magic trick and instrumental mastery. The reality, of course, is the three from the outset display the kind of intuitive connection one finds only in the very best moments of free improvisation.

Each musician continues to provide momentum by contributing new developments or by responding to a contribution by another member. Moments like those around the 4:25 or 19:30 marks allow the listener to realize it is fruitless to determine who is the leader and who is the follower on this date as the musicians operate as one collective body of sound. As I listened to this piece, I found myself surprised again and again at how many times I could not figure out whether certain sounds were being created by the drum kit, the double bass, or the alto saxophone. These, after all, are pretty different sounding instruments. Somehow, nonetheless, moments like those around 6:00 or 8:40 provide a wonderful blending and confusion of sonic voices.

The second work runs much shorter at around eight and a half minutes in length. This piece features a prickly start-and-stop collective improvisatory approach, and one of the highlights for me is the theme Emmeluth conjures into being. I do not know if Signe does so intentionally, but the leitmotif here is a melodic fragment used at times by Peter Brötzmann throughout his career. Shortly after Peter’s passing, I remember feeling deeply moved by the posthumous release of Chicken Shit Bingo with the saxophone giant and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love. The theme one hears throughout the second work on Live at All Ears is similar to that played by Peter in “Smuddy Water” on that record.

Emmeluth, Knedal Andersen, and Skavhaug Nergaard manifest interplay and equity for listeners on this Sonic Transmissions release. Exploration, vulnerability, and adventure occupy equally important roles performed with spontaneity and unity. And, if you care to hear what humans sound like at their best when they get together, work together, and create together, I highly recommend giving At All Ears a listen.

Live at the All Ears Festival can be listened to here:

Live At The All Ears Festival by Emmeluth : Knedal Andersen : Skavhaug Nergaard .

Rodrigo Amado & David Maranha - Desolation Row (European Echoes, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Paul Acquaro

It’s a slow burn and one that is quickly alight. From the opening moments of the album through its mid-way wanderings to its tense, and then suddenly gentle closing bars, we hear a consistent lightly dissonant thrum from David Maranha colorful electric organ and the eviscerating emotional tones of Rodrigo Amado’s tenor sax. One could easily slap the label spiritual jazz to this music as it truly seems to climb up from somewhere deep within both musicians, but there is more to it than that.

Over the course of 41 minutes, the one uninterrupted track of Desolation Row throbs and pulsates with an urgency that is palpable. Throughout, Maranha lays down a harmonic wave pool that flows and rolls with unrelenting, but calm, ferocity. For Amado, he does the opposite, his melodic ideas sail over these boiling waters with a confidence and focused energy, only once or twice going so far as to sonically abuse the instrument’s mechanics. It's quite easy to form a mental image of Amado’s veins pulsating as he pushes his instrument to its melodic limits.

Recorded live at the OUT.FEST in the outskirts of Lisbon in October 2025, Desolation Row follows the duo’s well-received Wrecks released the year before. Looking across both titles, one can hear, aside from the titular reference to Bob Dylan’s surreal masterpiece from 1965’s Highway 65 Revisited, which surveyed the cultural and political landscapes of its times with a prematurely cynical eye, an allusion, or acknowledgement, of decay. The music across both of this duo's albums is indeed foreboding and laced with a discernible disquiet — fitting for our current times. This is where the aforementioned spirituality meets current events, surveying and synthesizing the turmoil in the world and channeling it into something terrifying and lovely.

There is, however, more sense of hope on Desolation Row than on Wrecks. While Amado is still explosive, he has a slightly lighter melodic touch here. Similarly with Maranha, his organ playing is a little less abrasive and sharp edged. I was happy to survive Wrecks and I’ve come back multiple times to Desolation Row. You should too.

Desolation Row by David Maranha / Rodrigo Amado

Jon Raskin - Live at Celeste (self-released, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Hrayr Attarian

Saxophonist Jon Raskin is a restlessly innovative improviser who excels in the company of like-minded musicians. His discography is rich in collaborative and spontaneously created works that show seamless camaraderie. Live at Celesteis one such example. Celeste is a Vienna venue that hosts improvisation sessions on Monday nights, a series that bass clarinetist Susanna Garmayer curates. On November 4th, 2024, Raskin, with frequent collaborator Thomas Lehn on synthesizers and bassist Matija Schellander, performed a single 31-minute multilayered piece that is vibrant, intriguing, and hypnotic .

“Sounds of the Wienfluss” starts with angular ensemble exchanges. Raskin’s agile alto saxophone forges a serpentine path within Schellander’s bowed phrases. Lehn contributes sound effects that underscore the dramatic ambiance. The mood is quite contemplative throughout, even though the group conversation ebbs and flows from fiery and riotous to quiet and somber. Raskin blows gentle, flittering notes, as Lehn peppers the music with clear, resonant chimes. Matija adds an organic quality to the interplay with dark, dense lines that delightfully contrast with Lehn’s otherworldly tones. Raskin’s alto alternates between urgent and acerbic melodies to solemn, crystalline refrains depending on the atmosphere his bandmates create.

A third of the way in, Schellander’s percussive bass ushers in an expectant undercurrent. Lehn responds with tense synth vamps. As Raskin returns with an elegant and passionate solo, the tune takes on an otherworldly quality with a touch of angst. Lehn brings subtle theatricality to the collective conversation, while Schellander contributes dark lyricism. Both perfectly complement Raskin’s forlorn saxophone lines. The result is wistful and introspective with a touch of mysticism. Slowly, as this stimulating and emotive three-way stream of consciousness comes to closure the trio members align their individual extemporizations with one another. Thus, the conclusion is haunting and provocative.

Live at Celeste is a brilliant and poetic recording. Raskin, Lehn, and Schellander demonstrate sublime synergy and share an innovative spirit. The result is a satisfying listening experience, one that stays memorable. even after the album itself has stopped playing.

Live At Celeste by Jon Raskin

The return of diatribes: Part II

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Nick Ostrum

diatribes, the long-standing house duo of Insub Records, had been on hiatus while percussionist Cyril Bondi and electronicist d’incise pursued other projects, sometimes together, sometimes apart. That hiatus has ended, at least for now. This year, 2026, has gifted us four realizations of a single score, L’apport (French for “the contribution”), each featuring the diatribes core in collaboration with a different musician (or in the sole case of Sound the alarm, a team of five) to round out a third rotating seat.

diatribes and Stefan Thut - L'apport : Lâ dèchigeâ (Insub, 2026)

Composer and cellist Stefan Thut has collaborated with d’incise and Bondi in the Insub.8tet (many of whose members appear on the 7tet release featured below), but, as far as I can tell, never just with the diatribes duo. Recorded in situ in the Wallis Mountains of Switzerland, this realization of L’apport comes across as a cross section of Thut’s minimalism (coupled with short references to Swiss folk songs), d’incise and Bondi’s forays into field-recorded environmental improvisation (see their Polytopies project), and all three’s long-standing fascination with long-tones. Bird chirps introduce Lâ dèchigeâ and abound throughout. With Bondi now on shruti box and d’incise on objects and laptop, the ambient bird, breeze, and other nature sounds provide the underlying soundtrack with which the trio interacts. Maybe by default of volume, Thut stands out the most with his intermittent legato drawls over the textures laid by the nature sounds and diatribes’s soft incidental contributions. A fine, divergent complement to the other performances released here and recommended especially to those drawn toward hyper-minimalism and musical interventions into nature sounds.

L'apport : Lâ dèchigeâ by DIATRIBES & STEFAN THUT .

Insub.7tet - L'apport : Sound the alarm (Insub, 2026)

L’apport: Sound the alarm is the outlier in this project, as it expands the diatribes +1 core to a full seven. In addition to d’incise and Bondi, the group is rounded out by two vocalists, Antoine Läng and Natalie Peters, violinist Anouck Genthon, and reedists Christophe Verthet and Esther Vaucher, respectively on soprano and tenor. Because of the size of the group, one might be tempted to assume Sound the alarm is the apex of the project. However, I am not sure that this realization is any more complete than the others. L’apport is that open.

This final installment unfolds as slowly as the others, but with more elements and a more frequent trade-off between them. Läng and Peters voices add a human dimension and, following the dedication, a sense of urgency as they intermingle with, supplant, and yield to the various instruments that calmly vie for space. The resulting sense of calm is disquieting rather than comforting. One gets the sense of drowning, or the dolorous moans of those present and past contending to be heard among a series of other soft ribbons of sound and muted alarm pulses about 13 minutes and the more forceful soundings starting 26 minutes in. Sound the alarm, indeed. Let us hope there are ears open enough to hear.

NB: All proceeds from purchases of L’apport: Lâ dèchigeâ will benefit the Ghasan Abu Sita children’s fund.

L'apport : Sound the alarm by INSUB.7TET .

Read part 1 here

The return of diatribes: Part I

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Nick Ostrum

diatribes, the long-standing house duo of Insub Records, had been on hiatus while percussionist Cyril Bondi and electronicist d’incise pursued other projects, sometimes together, sometimes apart. That hiatus has ended, at least for now. This year, 2026, has gifted us four realizations of a single score, L’apport (French for “the contribution”), each featuring the diatribes core in collaboration with a different musician (or in the lone case of Sound the alarm, a team of five) to round out a third rotating seat.

diatribes and Jean-Luc Guionnet - L'apport : An awkward position (insub, 2026)

Jean-Luc Guionnet is one of the most uncompromising saxophonists around. He plays maximalist, and he plays minimalist. He also produces electro-acoustic sound art, more in the latter vein than the former, which give him the ears and unique set of chops to deal with the current understated incarnation of diatribes. The title, L’apport: An awkward position, is likely meant with some irony. No member’s contribution is awkward, nor does any seem to throw the others for an unwieldy loop. This is slowly churning, meticulously constructed granular music. Gone are the beats of d’incise’s early days. This is abstract music conducted in real-time at the molecular level. Turn the headphones up and indulge in the beautifully rendered textures, punctuated periodically by a few choice honks, squawks, flutters, and clucks from a deeply attuned Guionnet. This is certainly among the the spikiest and most active of the L’apport series.

L'apport : An awkward position by DIATRIBES & JEAN-LUC GUIONNET

diatribes and Clara Levy - L'apport : Ke ya me transí (insub, 2026)

Ke ya me transí (Sesotho for I’m taking the train) features diatribes with violinist Clara Levy. It is a slow, cumulative affair. Unlike An awkward position, this realization is based on drones, including Bondi’s methodical exploration of a vibraphone. Images of the hum of bees on a sultry day, sunlight refracted through a wispy fog, its counterpart in the tentative excavation of a hazy memory flit by. Six minutes in, the drama thickens in a pulsing marcato run, and from there the piece departs on a heavier expanse of long tones over various rings, rattles, and other sounds. Out of this sonic brume, Levy periodically engages in passages of melodies that play both with medieval Sephardic scales (as the notes indicate) and remind me of Johnny Chang and other contemporary lowercase violinists, who blend quiet, amelodic structures with strained classical and folk motifs. Fifteen minutes in, the repeating notes mark a break, then a heavier atmosphere, again returning to a series of vying long tones. (This type of break repeats periodically throughout the single track.) A wonderful and deeply introspective album, and a consummate example of what the chamber music tradition still has offer when cambered through the right lens.

L'apport : Ke ya me transí by DIATRIBES & CLARA LEVY

diatribes and Lise Barkas - L'Apport : Apprendre la manière (Insub, 2026)

The third installment in the series invites Lise Barkas’s bagpipes and hurdy gurdy to the crew. The result is a unique blend of the contemporary – long tones, false starts and stops, the elevation of the experiment over some consummative realization, electronics – early bardic traditions – Barkas’ contributions and the interaction between a single measure leitmotif and a thudding bass drum. In its circular ritualism, this resembles d’incise and Bondi’s recent work in their La Tène trio. For her part, Barkas helps pull the music from the dance hall inclinations of that project to sprightlier, if also halting, terrain. The irregular beats are more conducive to prancing around a dance-fire than bobbing around some warped chthonic club. The edges are frayed. The contours are ruffled and twisted. The abrupt stops can be distracting at times in the first realization, but are often deployed to great effect, especially in the glitchier passages and the more robust second one.

L'Apport : Apprendre la manière by DIATRIBES & LISE BARKAS

Reza Askari Roar Quintet - Maining Suite part 3

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Recorded at the Kammermusiksaal Deutschlandfunk in Cologne, the piece from bassist and composer Reza Askari features Lina Allemano (trumpet), Stefan Karl Schmid (tenor sax), Christopher Dell (vibraphone), Fabian Arends (drums) and Askari. According to the composer, the composition forms the third part of his Maining Suite and is dedicated to pianist and composer Felix Hauptmann. It revisits and reshapes several motives from Maining Part Two—first documented on the 2022 album Roar feat. Christopher Dell—while introducing a new motive that will evolve further in future installments of the suite.

Also, seenEyal Hareuveni's review of xAYb v8v dYAx (Boomslang, 2026).

Ed Hazell - ENERGY CENTER, A history of Studio Rivbea (NoBusiness Records, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Ferruccio Martinotti

Paris in the 1920s, with Picasso, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Gide and Gertrude Stein sitting at the Shakespeare & Co.; the Bauhaus with Oskar Schlemmer's theater and the themed parties; the boppers at Minton's Playhouse on 118th Street; the CBGB's in 1976. In a word: The Scene. Is anyone indifferent to its call? Certainly not us. In many cases, it arises from the suggestions of historians, journalists, and/or enthusiasts who shape it “ex post”, but who cares? Thinking of a group of people, in a specific historical and social context, sharing a common cultural sentiment, simply generates unparalleled fascination. Just a few years before the explosion of the punk supernova of the Ramones, Television, and Patti Smith, around the same geographic perimeter (Village, Lower East Side, Soho), seismographs recorded a new artistic ferment. Inspired by the AACM in Chicago and the Black Artists Group in St. Louis, a group of musicians, writers, and actors repurposed abandoned spaces such as lofts, warehouses and industrial buildings into creative hubs in which to live, play, record, teach, discuss: Loft Jazz was born. Wise Old Man Wadada Leo Smith summarized it this way: “There's the mainstream, and you're not part of it, so you have to build your own reality. And that reality is not a protest against, but something for ourselves.”

There are two main hotspots: the hottest is Studio Rivbea at 24 Bond St., where Sam Rivers lives with his wife, Bea; then Ali's Alley at 77 Greene St., Rashid Ali's home, club, recording studio, and headquarters of his Survival Records. Contributing to the cause are James DuBois and Juma Sultan with Studio We; Warren Smith with Studio WIS; David Murray and Stanley Crouch with Studio Infinity; the theater/music space La MaMa and The Soundscape. Without predefined aesthetics or boundaries of any kind, the rules of engagement are crystal clear: Community and Freedom. This extraordinary bonfire of creativity spanned almost the entire 1970s, extinguishing in 1979. For those who didn't experience it firsthand, the reference bible has always been the five Wildflowers albums recorded at Rivbea in 10 days in May 1976, featuring all the key players. The records have become difficult to find, even in the 3-CD version, but don't despair, because in Lithuania, NoBusiness Records' mission is to soothe our regrets and to grant our wishes. And they do so with Loft Jazz as well. First and foremost, with the 2009 box set "Muntu Recordings," celebrating saxophonist Jemeel Moondoc, then with the “Rivbea Live” series by Oliver Lake, Jimmy Lyons, Arthur Blythe, and Maurice McIntyre, recorded at Rivbea, which take us back to Downtown, allowing us to relive the magic of that extraordinary season. Four unmissable albums, period.

From a chronicles perspective, to date, the only one who has dealt with that scene is Michael Heller with “Loft Jazz: Improvising New York in the 1970s.” As an ethnomusician, Heller focuses his analysis on the economic, social, and urban aspects of early 1970s New York, crucial to generating the breeding ground without which the scene would never have taken shape. We said “to date”, because NoBusiness Records draw a line, putting an end to the topic, now and ever. It does so with Ed Hazell, a Boston musicologist and curator of Sam Rivers' musical legacy, who, with "Energy Center," provides us with the ultimate book on the Loft movement and its epicenter, Studio Rivbea.

The work is divided into two parts that represent the axes along which the author's exegesis moves. The first 100 pages lead us to the Loft through the personal and musical journey of Sam Rivers and his wife Beatrice, whose centrality to the story comes finally to light in all its entirety. If you think you already know everything about the subject, our humble advice is to not skip a single line; we're sure you’ll find something worth reading. The next 200 pages are the book's cornerstone and hallmark: the sessionography. A mind-blowing session history, detailed by date and musicians, will satisfy even the most compulsive completist, providing the reader with vivid evidence of what an incredible musical powerhouse Rivbea was. The list of recordings released at the Studio completes such a philological, gigantic labor of love. A word more about the iconographic content. The photographs, many previously unpublished, are astonishing and, in their timeless, b&w beauty, confirm, once more, how much jazz owes to photography and vice versa. Still not enough? Then take a look at the reproductions of dozens and dozens of ads, brochures, and flyers related to Rivbea's activities: a golden cornucopia that will bring tears to your eyes. Could you ask for more from a book? Honestly, NO. File under: Holy Grail.

Order from NoBusiness' website.

or here...

Book by Ed Hazell - ENERGY CENTER - A HISTORY OF STUDIO RIVBEA - Digital (pdf file + samples of music played at Rivbea) / Hard Cover Book - 321 pages by Sam Rivers

Masayo Koketsu & Nava Dunkelman - Veins of Rain (Relative Pitch, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Richard Blute

““Ain’t nobody coming?” [Ali] said to Coltrane.

“No, it’s just you and me.”

“What are we playing? Is it fast? Is it slow?”

“Whatever you want it to be. Come on. I’m going to ring some bells.””

-Quoted by Ben Ratliff in Coltrane: The Story of a Sound.

John Coltrane’s sax-drums duo album with Rashied Ali, Interstellar Space, stands as a singular achievement in the history of free jazz. The duo’s restlessness, their commitment to musical exploration and the profound communication taking place between them would create a template that has animated the practice of free jazz to this day.

Stef Gijssels, in his 2007 post on this website, wrote the following about that combination of instruments:

“[It] offers a total freedom of interaction, but it's like poetry without rhyme, there is no comfort zone to fall back into, no safe haven, no safety net, it's swim or drown.”

I think any jazz musicians wanting to tackle the drums/sax duo format must be very brave indeed, knowing that a comparison to Interstellar Space is almost inevitable. But they would also realize the freedom of unfettered expression that comes with it. And great musicians would view that as an opportunity to create something new, to engage in a genuinely novel musical conversation. Best of all, we get to eavesdrop on that conversation.

I’ll always click on a drum/sax duo when I come across one on bandcamp. But I was especially happy to see this particular combo as I was familiar with both musicians and had very much appreciated earlier work of theirs. Both were in a trio album with Tim Berne, Poiēsis, one of the best albums of 2025. Drummer, percussionist Nava Dunkelman was also in a tremendous duo with violinist gabby fluke-mogul, titled Likht.Saxophonist Masayo Koketsu has a solo album, entirely on alto, called Ballade in which she plays jazz standards. She even covers Lover Man. (Seriously, I discovered this album in the course of writing this review and it’s exceptional. Do check it out.)

The first track here, 初雷–hatsurai, begins with a thunderburst from Koketsu. Dunkelman matches her intensity. Google Translate tells me the title means First Thunder. Yup. I’ve listened to this album a bunch of times now and it still snaps my head back. These musicians are serious and they want your attention. Both musicians genuinely bring thunder on this track.

There’s so much good music on this album, and what’s most impressive is the great variety of ideas to be found. The third track, 露の玉–tsuyu no tama, meaning Dewdrop Ball, is beautiful. Koketsu begins with lightning quick shards of notes with Dunkelman responding with bells. A reference to Interstellar Space? Then there’s a brief bit of Ayler and then the musicians are off to explore more new ideas.

The final and longest track 夕霧–yūgiri, meaning Evening Mist, is the best. It begins with plaintive playing from the saxophone with very light percussion. Then Koketsu’s playing gains in intensity and her lines become more complex. Dunkelman happily matches her and then takes over. Now she’s bringing the thunder and Koketsu again responds. Here, and throughout the album, these two musicians seem so in tune it’s a delight to listen to.

Possibly the most surprising thing about this album is the first sentence of the liner notes:

“Masayo Koketsu and Nava Dunkelman met for the first time in this studio session.”

Veins of Rain by Masayo Koketsu, Nava Dunkelman

John Coltrane 100: Expression - A Summary of the Final Stage

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Klaus Kitzinger

As I already had the privilege to write a feature about the posthumously released album Stellar Regions on this blog, i want to stretch this even a bit further. Here, I take a look at the period to follow, which eventually and fatally turned out to be the last five months in John Coltrane’s life. My focus is on the production of music in this final stage, as far it has been recorded and released, rather than John’s personal or health condition.

On 15 February 1967, John had recorded the tracks eventually released as Stellar Regions in 1995 (see my earlier feature) with the quartet.

One week later, on 22 February 1967, he returned with Rashied Ali for a saxophone – drums duo session, eventually to be released as Interstellar Space (see Gary Chapin‘s feature on this album).

On 07 March 1967, in another session with the quartet again, he recorded two tracks, as far as we know, Ogunde and Number One.

Ogunde is, first of all, a relatively short piece at a few seconds over 3 ½ minutes. A noticeable parallel to Stellar Regions, where the title track and Iris have approximately the same length and concise structure. The track takes its title presumably from an afro-brazilean folk song „Ogundu Varere“, rougly translated as a prayer to the gods. John occupied himself with spiritual traditions especially from Africa. John uses his forceful, cry-like late saxophone sound, overblowing his instrument, which gives an emotional urgence to the piece. The theme starts with a solemn, hmyn-like melody, but breaks out in free, atonal outbursts, before it fades away. In summary, John condenses the intensity of his (at that time) usually half-hour long live improvisations into less than a handful of minutes (but see below, what happened live).

At some time in spring (David S. Wild confirmed in the liner notes for Stellar Regions that this track was not recorded on 15 February, so the actual recording date remains unknown), John must have recorded To Be, where he plays flute and is rejoined by Pharoah Sanders on piccolo flute. He shows a very calm, introspective and meditative side here. At over 16 minutes playing time, this track feels like a spiritual retreat. The two flutes give it an airy, almost floating mood. Alice Coltrane’s flowing piano style provides a mystic, harp-like cushion. Rashied Ali on drums and Jimmy Garrison on bass keep it calm and subdued. All together, the piece lacks a trditional jazz pulse, even leaves traditional jazz structures completely and makes a profound structural switch towards a meditative, open-end spiritual incantation. It stands as one of the most explicit artifacts of the creative partnership between John and Alice at that final stage and already mirrors the „cosmic jazz“ landscapes that Alice would pioneer on her own in the years to follow in her landmark solo releases (Universal Consciousness, Journey in Satchidananda). Not to forget about Pharoah Sanders (Karma).

Also unknown is the exact recording date for the piece titled Expression in spring 1967 with the quartet, which later lended its title to the album.

23 April 1967 is the date of the last live recording, The Olatunji Concert. This performance, originally recorded for a radio broadcast, is featured by Fotis Nikolakopoulos on this blog, so see there. With due respect to Fotis, I will limit myself here to the absolutely striking contrast between the live version of Ogunde and the studio version. Performed live, it swells to 28 minutes playing time. The studio recording’s tight and condensed structure is only preserved in the theme at the beginning to which it returns only at the very end. In between, it gets overwhelmed by a storm-like wave of pure energy. After the introduction of the melody as theme, the structure collapses completely in a ritual storm. A dense, polyrhythmic vortex is unchained in Rashied Ali’s drumming. Alice Coltrane plays cascade-like runs on the piano. On saxophone, Pharoah Sanders adds his bone-rattling, ecstatic overblowing cries. Yes, the quartet has been expanded here. Pharoah Sanders is back at it on the second saxophone. Two additional percussionists joined in, Algie DeWitt and Jumma Santos.

The last ever live gig came at Baltimore’s Famous Ballroom on May 7, 1967. No audio recording of that performance is known to exist.

On 17 May 1967, exactly two months before John’s death, a sextet met for a last studio recording. The master tapes have been lost or at least unissued so two tracks with the titles None Other and Kaleidoscope have been unreleased so far and do not even appear on retrospective compilations.

With the recorded material, a last studio record was conceived during John’s lifetime. It was given the title Expression. John was actively involved in the production and met with Bob Thiele.

On side 1, it had Ogunde as the opening track (the studio version, as above, of course). Track #2 was To Be with John and Pharoah Sanders on flutes (as above). At over 16 minutes, it was the longest track, making up for nearly half of the original album’s playing time, and the only track on the album in which Pharoah Sanders made an appearance.

Side 2 opened with the majestic ballad Offering, the only track chosen from the 15 February session, thus making it the only track on the posthumous album Stellar Regions (see there) that had been released before and had an original title. Hank Shteamer has just featured this track prominently in the New York Times and put it into the larger context of spiritual jazz, for which a piece like Offering „would seem like a perfect prototype“ (Hank Shteamer, Spiritual Jazz Has Turned Cozy. John Coltrane Demanded More. New York Times, September 18, 2026). The original album closed with the title track Expression,John‘s last studio recording to ever be released. In the later CD release only, Number O ne, recorded on the same day as Ogunde, was added as a bonus track (the track, however, had been released for the first time in a 1978 compilation album).

Obviously, the most recent recording session of May 1967 was not considered in the process at all (at that time, the tapes at least should still have been around, I guess?).

John reportedly selected the four tracks for the original album release and their exact sequence himself. On Friday, 14 July 1967, three days before his death, he met Bob Thiele, handed the master tapes over to him and finally authorised the title and the release of the album, but expressed his opposition against liner notes.

Expression, as John Coltrane’s final statement, was released in September 1967, two months after his death, containing John‘s chronologically last audible studio recordings and being the first posthumous release of his music.

John Coltrane 100: Interstellar Space

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Gary Chapin

Reading back into the reviews of this recording, from over the past decades, you encounter the word “relentless” a lot, probably more than for any other album in the history of albums. It’s interesting because, when I first heard Interstellar Space, “relentless” was the word that occurred to me — right after the introductory bells of track one faded. Till then, I hadn’t realized that “relentless” was a thing that music could be, and that relentlessness was awesome. Even transcendent.

It’s not a complicated record. You’ve got your tenor and drums. Each piece starts with a theme, enters the improvisation, and then winds down and restates the theme. Each improvisation travels a similar arc, beginning in a saner space, rising intensity and ecstasy, whipping us into a frenzy, then easing off into … well, not serenity, but you get close to it as you hear the shaken bells that begin the next piece.

The joys of Interstellar Space come not from structural intrigue, but from the cascadingly brilliant improvs. Coltrane and Ali were both ridiculously ON that day. (Ali actually felt he had underperformed because he didn’t know they were doing a duet session until he arrived at the session.) And the duet setting makes the music almost transparent. Aside from the beauty of Trane and Ali’s playing, you also get a sense of exactly what Coltrane was trying for. His insistent explorations (relentless) are laid bare. This is an excellent entry to Coltrane’s later works. His playing is like water moving through the ground, trying to find its way through a shelf of granite. Eventually, the water finds the crevices, freezes, expands, thaws, and breaks the stone to pieces. The water always wins. A force of nature.

John Coltrane 100: The Olatunji Concert: The Last Live Recording

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

Truth must be said from the beginning, I’m not, even a little, objective when it comes to John Coltrane’s last chapter in life and in music. Those two are inseparable in any case. Second truth is that this last period that starts roughly sometime in 1964, prior to A Love Supreme, and ends with his death is my favorite music. He and all his comrades, especially Alice, Pharoah, Rashied and Jimmy managed to create a body of music of transcendence –an ascension for the soul and deep meditation for the mind.

My album of choice is this last live recording (where the aforementioned musicians are joined by Juma Santos and Algie DeWitt on percussion), recorded just three months before his death at the Olatunji Center of African Culture in Harlem, N.Y.C. In a quite symbolic move (the place: deep in an African-American neighborhood, the name: African Culture and tradition as a starting point) the music of the players, even though both geographically and in name still black, still jazz but free, is already a new entity.

With this recording, one that the sound is not so hi-fi, Coltrane’s sound seems to be in the final stage of the total freedom that Ascension initiated. Listening to the unrelenting growls, howls and their thick wall of sound created by Trane and Pharoah, one could easily comment that the two tracks, Ogunde of almost half an hour and the total reconstruction of My Favorite Things that clocks in thirty four uncontrollably joyous minutes, are pure noise.

This ferocious a la Ayler attack by the two locked in reeds brothers, provides a rough field, like a magic carpet flying in the air, for the others to give everything they have. And they have to give a lot to the not so big crowd attending, as their collective struggle to follow or lead at some points, or intertwine with small gestures like the polyrhythmic-not-so-rhythmic barrages by Rashied, the lovingly plucked piano chords by Alice and the even though not always audible, monstrous strength by Jimmy on double bass.

Allow me to humbly comment that Coltrane’s music channeled everything in black tradition and went beyond that. He created his own tradition. You also don’t need me to say that this is an amazing recording. One that encapsulates all the stated goals by John Coltrane himself. Total freedom, love, myriads of feelings and a spiritual unity that could be the final Truth.

If there’s something to think about, to question, it could be this: where could his music go after this? Did he, before even turning 41, reached a point of no return?

@fot.isn

John Coltrane 100: Concert in Japan

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Martin Schray

The reason I like John Coltrane’s Concert in Japan best out of all my Coltrane albums is that it includes one of my all-time favorite tracks: “Peace on Earth”. And as good as “Meditation/Leo (Part One),” “Leo (Part Two),” and “Part Three” are - “Peace on Earth” outshines them all.

When John Coltrane arrived in Japan in 1966, he was welcomed like a king. He arrived at Haneda Airport on July 8, 1966, along with his wife Alice, Pharoah Sanders, Jimmy Garrison, and Rashied Ali. Ali, who later recalled the trip, said they were greeted by thousands of Japanese fans. At the airport, there were huge, life-size cardboard cutouts of the musicians, a red carpet leading from the plane to the terminal, and bouquets of flowers.

And Coltrane had a message, it was no coincidence that he wanted to perform in Japan. He insisted on traveling to Nagasaki to visit the Peace Memorial at the site of the atomic bombing. He laid down a wreath and prayed for a long time. The place had a profound emotional and spiritual impact on him. On the evening of his concert in Nagasaki, he played “Peace on Earth” - at that time a new piece and a kind of musical prayer for peace. At a press conference during the tour, when asked about the Vietnam War, he said: “I dislike war, period. It should stop, and any other war.”

On Concert in Japan - and on “Peace on Earth” in particular - one can see how Coltrane’s thirst for new sounds is inextricably linked to his desire to view the universe from a spiritual perspective; his music radiates a cosmic aura. The piece begins with an incredibly beautiful melody that floats above Alice’s arpeggios, Garrison’s bass sprinklings, and Ali’s sparse drumming. It seems like the musical embodiment of the Garden of Eden. Nearly six minutes of pure harmony - but then deliberate atonality creeps in, paradise is threatened, only heavenly saxophone lines save it for the time being. Then, however, a dissonant storm is conjured up, shaking this world to its very foundations. The piece is thrown into utter disarray; block chords replace the arpeggios, and the bass and drums throw the meter overboard. At the very end, however, harmony returns, and the melodies resurface, albeit different from how they began.

In July 1966, John Coltrane was just one year away from his untimely death, yet his zest for life was greater than ever. His musical explorations were more adventurous than before, and “Peace on Earth” brilliantly captures the essence of what his music is all about. Or, as my friend Thomas Weber puts it: “On the one hand, it’s utter extravagance and exhaustion, on the other, it’s the dissolution of boundaries. Free jazz with melodies.”

John Coltrane 100: Ascension

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Gregg Miller

To celebrate and commemorate John Coltrane’s 100 ^th birthday, drummer extraordinaire Don Berman will reprise at the Chapel Performance Space in Seattle his original composition, 'Ascension Northwest', written in the spirit of Coltrane’s Ascension (Impulse!, 1966). As in the original, Berman has11 musicians playing a series of mantras interspersed with spirited soloing over improvised support from subsets of other players, including a double-bass duet.

A preview of this year’s performance written by Paul Rauch appears in Seattle’s Earshot Jazz magazine: https://online.fliphtml5.com/risyt/Earshot_Jazz_09_2026/#p=13

You can hear earlier versions of 'Ascension Northwest' released here: https://threshold24.bandcamp.com/album/ascension‑northwest

As a contribution for the FJB Coltrane birthday column, I’ve asked the 11 musicians performing 'Ascension Northwest' (myself included) to reflect on Coltrane’s Ascension and its impact on their musical journey. Below, our answers (gingerly edited). The questionnaire is reproduced at the very end.

Tom Varner (French horn)

1. I knew about Coltrane and loved his music from his time with Miles, and also his ‘classic’ quartet recordings, when I was in high school and getting into jazz. I did not know about Ascensionuntil a bit later, perhaps early in college. Even though I loved Ornette Coleman, and even Albert Ayler, I must say that very late Coltrane and Ascension was a bit :”Whoa! This is too heavy for me!” at first listen. I think I wanted to hear the ‘melodic line’ no matter how ‘out’ it was, and this music went beyond that. Eventually I grew to love it, letting go of the ‘I must hear a clear line’ worry and just enjoying being carried away in the power of the SOUND. I.e., that sound of a ‘scary but then NOT scary’ glorious totality of several improvisers all going full steam ahead at once. The JCOA Michael Mantler ‘Communications’ 3-LP set, from 1968, with Pharoah Sanders and other greats, was a kind of bridge for me to the world of Ascension. To a kind of ‘beautiful crying battle’ as opposed to just noise. Within one or two years, I was open to playing in those settings!

1a. Ascension opened up a new world of “multiple new sound-creating improvisers” creating new avenues that were not ‘just’ chord change or single-line orientated. From then on, Coltrane’s world and the worlds of, say, Xenakis and Ligeti, were not so far apart!

1b.Moving into the ‘90s, I worked with ensembles that had 6, 7, 8 winds with bass and drums. I was going for that high energy sound where it was ‘ok’ to not hear individual single lines and just get swept away in the sound. The best example of this is my own “Death at the Right Time,” on “The Mystery of Compassion” on Soul Note (1992). 5 saxes, three low brass, bass and drums.

1c. Ascension kind of gave us ‘permission’ to create beautiful and powerful structures with very little or no written music, just ideas, and trusting that the improvisers will create a lasting artwork on the spot. I love that!

2. This is very corny, but at age 18, I clearly remember thinking “Well, remember, Tom, if things get bad in the future, or very challenging, don’t forget to listen to Coltrane—that music is healing. That music will always be there.” And, I would also simply say, “thank you, Mr. Coltrane.”

Jim Knodle (trumpet)

I heard Ascension when it was released in 1966. I regard it as a companion to Ornette's double quartet project Free Jazz. The interaction between Scott LaFaro and Jimmy Garrison is really something! Perry Robinson told me that the whole thing started at the Federal Prison in Lexington where everyone practiced in the same room at the same time. They didn’t want them to rehearse, so they just played ad hoc .

Kenny Mandell (alto sax)

1. I was probably 19 when I first heard Ascension. 1972 or so. Being in college, I had heard free jazz players in NYC, and I knew Sun Ra’s music. Ascension was way more organized than a lot of Sun Ra’s music insofar as it kept the traditional jazz form where there was thematic material followed by solos. There are motifs but there aren’t any chord changes to speak of, and there is some degree of cacophony. Depending on the player, some of the solos were more traditional, others were, I would say, divinely inspired, like Eric Dolphy’s.

In my listening life at that time, I quickly went from Led Zeppelin to the Art Ensemble, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, and Cecil Taylor. Most people thought I was crazy. I related to the energy of it. The dissonance never bothered me per se. Ascension showed me that the big band format could be stretched. The rock stuff was relatively static in comparison. Hendrix was close. Everybody else stayed in the form. I see Ascensionas important but not seminal. It’s certainly part of the canon.

1b. I’ve put many large groups together over the years. Part of the game plan for large group improvisation is to establish a level of trust. I’ve learned to pick people who are comfortable recognizing that the traditional limits or strictures put on playing are actually optional, and one can use or not use those depending on what sort of statement the whole piece wants to make. Murray Bookchin’s Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971, 1986) was pivotal (early 1970s) for me as much as any of this music. I tried to use those principles in music and in organizing. My book some day will be called The Tyranny of Harmony. Piano chords in particular limit your choices as an improvisor.

It’s also the case that as I’ve gotten older and found that the audience just hasn’t been there for totally unstructured, large-form music, I’ve tended to select pieces or write pieces that give the audience some sort of repeated motif to ground their listening experience.

1c. Ascension opened the door. After A Love Supreme (1965), people thought Coltrane took an extreme left turn into the world of sound exploration as it could be manifested in improvisation and group interaction. Ascension put into stark reality the challenges of making and of listening to that kind of music. I don’t think they got to the level that the Art Ensemble of Chicago did over the years, and some of Cecil’s groups that stayed together for years: Jimmy Lyons, Sirone, Andrew Cyrille, they practiced incessantly and got telepathic.

2. John Coltrane had an obsession with achieving a certain sound. Coltrane—his essence for me–is that ceaseless searching. This is what I love about music probably the most, it’s that it never ends.

Dick Valentine (tenor sax)

I reflected at length on the questions you posed, and on the evolution of my attitudes, responses and relations with Coltrane’s music, which I understand in a context of almost 60 years trying to educate myself and participate in contemporary expressions of Great Black Music. In the end, despite that his recorded output made a tremendous impact on my playing ‑‑ and was a singular factor in motivating my drive to make music ‑‑ I think it fair to say Ascension, the recording, has not occupied as big a space in my development or conceptualization as some other works.

I played in Don Berman's three presentations of Ascension Northwest in 2016, and I'm very pleased indeed to get to do it again on the Coltrane centenary. I really cherish the privilege of participating with artists the caliber of those whom Don has persuaded. I look around the room at the assemblage of musical knowledge, emotional depth, technical proficiency, and aesthetic ambition, I am inspired and amazed and humbled.

I’m long past accepting that I will never "understand" society. It seems to me the “order that governs power and human relations” in our real world is founded on out‑of‑date assumptions regarding what humanity needs to flourish. I know that there are many people aware of this damaging misalignment, and I can tell they mostly share my frustration that fixing large‑scale misalignments is not in the offing, thanks precisely to the systems that govern the distribution of power and dictate humans' relationship with real resources.

So, on John Coltrane's centenary, we'll gather musicians, players and audience in celebration. In a sense, a roomful is perhaps a model of “society.” Everyone in the room will have some mental image of what constitutes a successful event ‑‑ in context, the definition of the community “flourishing,” right? As players, we have the responsibility to provide physical, audible inputs to the outcome. There is a bit of magic to what may happen here. Each player contributes to the global fabric, whose nature he may not predict. It’s understood that coordinated inputs are in some sense a prerequisite for success, and communication is required for coordination. How is communication achieved? By the act that constitutes that player’s input. It’s a bit recursive, to say the least!

Neil Welch (tenor sax)

1. Ascension came my way when I was 15 or 16. I picked up the album in cd format at a record store. This was my first experience with Trane’s music on Impulse!. I picked up the album out of curiosity. I was initially struck by three things:

1. The album cover ‑‑ Coltrane the seeker, looking beyond himself, and beyond us to something cosmic.

2. The length of the album: Until this point, I didn't know that a ‘jazz’ album could be +/‑ 40 minutes in length.

3. The cd version had takes 1 and 2, which made it a double album. It was the most expensive CD I had ever bought.

The response for me was immediate. I felt the album opened with a declarative question. Coltrane begins with a theme, but it is incomplete. The tonic is ‘missing’ from the first note he plays. He asks the band a question with only the partial theme, and leaves it to the band to complete that theme.

Ascension felt to me a major and inevitable document in Coltrane’s music from this period. The emotional intensity of his solos, and what he was asking of a small group, had reached a tipping point. I found it deeply humbling and revealing that he used the vehicle of a communal sound to further amplify the concept of the jazz musician as soloist and group collaborator.

1a. After Ascension, I understood that in musical conversation, a powerful theme could be stated with brevity. A short theme can grant space for a complex response of virtually any length.

1b. Ascension helped me to experience song length as a durational mind-set. A song could, and ought to be, exactly the length needed to fulfill its musical and emotional aims.

1c.Ascension is, for me, an album of colliding forces and the unity of embracing those forces towards a common mission. It’s like people in a building. All these souls one floor atop the other. Different lives, worldviews, needs, hurts, wants, but all share the same vertical massing. If that building is on fire, they are invested in each other's outcome. They’ve looked in the eyes of those people in the elevator.

2. Can we as a society still sit with, and grapple with in real time, discordance in art‑making? Can intensity of sound and emotion hold space for us in our lives and aid us in the journey of deeper personal growth?

Steve Meyer (alto sax)

1. I must have been 14 or 15. I was just getting into Coltrane and came across Ascension at my local record store. At that point I’d only known some of his earlier quartet work and work with Miles. Seeing that this was a larger group piqued my interest. And I recognized the names of a lot of heavy players, though I doubt I’d heard most of them at that point, so thought it would be a good album. After getting back home, I’m in my bedroom and put on the album. I don’t know what I was expecting but not too far into the first side (the first ensemble part) I knew it wasn’t for me. I didn’t know what to make of it, and it didn’t speak to me. I think I finished the first side but didn’t listen to the second. A few years went by before I was ready to give it another try. I was still an adventurous listener, so my first reaction didn’t turn me off from listening to other “out”/free musics which I grew to appreciate and enjoy more and more.

1a. If I don’t like what I hear on first listen, I remind myself that there are works of art out there that I’m not ready for. Music will speak to us when we’re ready to hear it.

1b. While I was listening to more out music in my teens it was years later before I played free music – at least with others. In high school this wasn’t the kind of music most of my musician friends would be into. Even with the one or two who weren’t opposed to it, we never thought to attempt it ourselves, at least not in any serious way, sticking to more standard jazz and the fusion music of the day. (This is early 80s, btw.) Even later, people I played with tended to be more conventional in the foundation of their music. These days I’m fortunate to have a community of musicians who embrace free/creative music. And, I have more confidence in myself to nudge the conversation that way when playing with others that I think will be receptive to it.

1c. I tend to not view music through a sociological lens, but Ascension and similar music has made me consider the normative orders of music in the US. Mainly, they’ve shown me there are a lot of stories to be told and a lot of different ways to tell them.

2. I want to thank Coltrane for his music and inspiration. The question to ask myself: how can I harness the focus and questing spirit of Trane?

Eric Ring (piano)

While A Love Supreme was life changing at 18, I’d surprisingly never heard Ascension prior to preparing for this performance.

Don Berman (composer, drums )

1. A sax player at my summer Maine resort job, a student of Jackie McLean, had introduced me to Coltrane’s Live at Birdland (Impulse!, 1964). This was 1972. I heard an amazing spiritual element in John Coltrane's music when I heard his quartet play “Alabama.” It struck me incredibly deeply and I have adored jazz and playing jazz ever since. (The piece was a deeply moving eulogy to the victims of bombing of the 16th street Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama.) A couple of years later, in my junior year of college, I heard Ascension and realized that Trane had helped jazz expand its scope enormously to express a wider range of feelings. With the Ascension session, jazz composition and form had evolved light years from the beginnings of jazz decades earlier. After Ascension, there was now a huge universe of possibilities for jazz musicians to explore in their work.

1a.As I got further into jazz I particularly loved Miles Davis and John Coltrane, because I saw how each had evolved continuously throughout their musical journeys, from one period and chapter and style to another. The way I think about music and music making after Ascension is part and parcel of how I feel about music and art in general. All of the art forms have a rich and magical history. If you have studied and played music for years and years, you have to discover who you are and what your aesthetic is.

1b. For me, Ascension is part of what guided me further into freer playing and improvising in the last 20 years. Creating my own compositions has become more important for me. I organize pieces that contain both written and improvised sections. For this I select musicians that can both interpret written compositions and also improvise very well.

2. I would ask others: How does Coltrane’s music move you and make you feel about what feelings or sounds you play and express when you play? The world is full of a truly amazing variety of music. There are masters playing in each of those styles. I would ask others who take music seriously to open their minds and make sure they hear the music of master creators, live when possible, and in as many styles as possible. Master the basic fundamentals, and take music as seriously as Trane did.

For those just seeking fun, that is fine too. A lot of striving people in the arts take things too seriously, especially when they become too self-absorbed and their egos interfere with what they are attempting to do as musicians. As the great pianist and educator Kenny Werner teaches his students and readers, “your value as a human being is not based upon how well you play a musical instrument.”

Gregg Miller (baritone sax)

1. Around 1997 I bought a used CD copy of the compilation, The Major Works of John Coltrane (GRP Records, 1992) which included both takes of Ascension as well as Om, Kulu Se Mama, and Selflessness. I was stunned at the difference in intent between those recordings and Giant Steps. In Giant Steps, I heard a restless cramming of as many notes as quickly as possible within structures that could barely contain them. In Ascension, Coltrane had left that set of problems behind in favor of a compositional form that foregrounded the free-playing (and listening, or not listening) of every other player, a dense maelstrom that produced its own power without regard to or in opposition to or transcending of the traditional tropes of organized sound. To my ears, there was still an evident structuredness to the resultant noise, but full-on interplay was now the method and the lesson. It felt to me like a releasing of mutual respect, a lifting of repression inherent in most musics, and a deliberate shifting of power dynamics from a singular ordered mind that commands obedience (and players willingly, often reverently submitting to that control) to the shared embrace of others who jointly participate. Messy, but beautiful. I was studying a lot of Habermas at the time, and so for me, the link between music-making and communicative action was an easy one to see/hear and understand. I wasn’t playing free music (or any music) at the time, but the seed had been sown without me knowing it.

1a. In the late 1990s I would listen to Ascension and the other tracks on Major Works over and again while studying. It was the kind of music that permitted my mind to roam freely and/or easily concentrate elsewhere without demanding I enter its rhythms, melodies, cadence. There was something liberating in its power to shape time and experience like that. Among other things, it forced me to confront the limitations of pop music and its draw.

1b. As wild as Ascensions ometimes feels, it predicates without having arrived at a music that depends foremost on collective improvisation where listening and meaningful response have overtaken chops and strutting (not that chops and strutting can’t be part of meaningful communication). What opens up, then, is the possibility for music-making where the reception of one’s own and others’ sound while playing is governed by a feeling out of the pulse of the whole, accepting contingency and accident as integral to the flow of making. Musical “intention” in this context becomes an emergent property of the experience of intersubjectivity.

1c. Most (90%?) deliberately made music appears to our ears in strict time, where the musicians aim to become part of a single organism beating in time, and their music tries to compel listeners to imaginatively join that rhythmic organism. There is solace and belonging offered in that vision of unity and unfreedom. I’ve had enough of that music. How else might we imagine and experience collective practices of meaning-making/moving/sounding as individual and collective flourishing/belonging/being-with-others? Ascension.

Questionnaire

1. When did you first hear Ascension, or come to know about it? What was your response? How did this event affect your understanding of Coltrane and what he’s up to, of jazz music, and/or music and what it’s up to?

1a. How do you think about music and music‑making after Ascension?

1b. Has Ascension (or its ilk) informed your practice – of playing, of organizing, of selecting musicians, of conceptualizing the field of music?

1c. Has Ascension informed your understanding of society, or, dare I say it, the normative order(s) that govern(s) our understanding of power and human relations?

2. What question would you want to ask of yourself, of others, about John Coltrane @100?

John Coltrane 100: Stellar Regions

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Klaus Kitzinger

Reflections on Stellar Regions (1967/1995)

Around the end of the year 1995, a „new“ album of John Coltrane, posthumous of course, was announced to be released. Alice Coltrane(AC), generally referred to in the press as Coltrane‘s widow and archive keeper, had found a previously lost tape of a 1967 recording date (and given titles to the tracks), we learned.

As a relative newbie to modern, avant-garde jazz, you would generally resort to sources like „Das Jazzbuch“ by acclaimed writer J.-E. Berendt from your local public library (in Lower Bavaria, in my case). As to Coltrane’s music, you would probably have already taken Soultrane and Blue Train as a starting point, passed by Giant Steps und initiated yourself into the Impulse-/classic quartet period with, for instance, Live at the Village Vanguard . You would have learned that A Love Supreme was the peak of his creative work and a great milestone of modern jazz in general. Going on further to Ascension, probably tempted by Mr Behrendt‘s description of it „as an orgasm lasting 40 minutes“, it was, however, not for me. It was simply too much for me to take at that time, especially the lack of any „song structure“, I did not find an orgasm, but a collective, cacophonic mess lasting 40 minutes, to be honest.

With that background, learning that the announced release, titled Stellar Regions , was originally recorded in 1967, it caught my curiosity nonetheless. Not only was this my birth year, it would also be interesting to see: how had Coltrane developed from 1965 on? And, sadly, we could expect to listen to some of his last recorded music, just five months before his death,

Some raw facts: All the music assembled on Stellar Regions was recorded in the Van Gelder Studio in one day’s work on 15 February 1967, and the released material comprises everything recorded in that session*, with his regular group members of that era: AC on piano, Jimmy Garrison (JG) on bass and Rashied Ali (RA) on drums. But at this date in the absence of saxophonist Pharoah Sanders(PS), thus reducing the late period quintet of Live at the Villard Vanguard Again! to a quartet. After this studio date, Coltrane would return there exactly one week later on 22 February for a duo recording with RA (Interstellar Space) and in March for three more tracks to be released in late September 1967 on Expression. All but one of the tracks on Stellar Regions were unreleased before (I knew none of it anyway), as #5 Offering had already been used to complete the Expressionalbum. And by the way, the title track #3 (alternate take #9) was an early version of Venus from the duo session with RA one week later.

What is going on here?

Having my CD copy of Stellar Regionsin hand, what did I get?

As an obvious statement already from the back of the cover: Shortness. A return to a noticeable format and compositional structure. 11 tracks (including 3 alternate versions) with a maximum length of just under 9 minutes (#1 Seraphic Light), well … that sounded fairly familiar to me, even compared to a Genesis or Dire Straits LP (which, in the meantime, had found a place a bit farther behind in the rack).

On first listen: Conciseness. Cohesiveness. Control, even constraint. The contrast to Ascension and even more so (although unknown to me), the sprawling marathon improvisations of his live 1966 work (the non-stop concerts of the 1966 tour in Japan!), becomes evident from the start. These pieces are tighter and more concise, the emotional bursts more focused.

Lyrical clarity. Spiritual atmosphere. Much to my surprise. While intense and free, these pieces are balanced with moments of meditative calm. I found lyrical beauty on #1 Seraphic Light, #5 Offering and #4 Iris -the latter being a gorgeous ballad, pleasant rediscovery on re-listening and easily the most traditionally and melodically accessible track on the album.

Is it „free“ jazz“ actually?

Is this free jazz, I wondered? While I have no doubt, that this is a true free jazz album and the right stuff for the readers and makers of the Free Jazz Blog, this album still sits quite on the border for me. Needless to say, by February 1967, Coltrane had abandoned traditional chord progressions and swing rhythms.

Why it may justifiably be called free jazz:

- The protagonist does of course not abandon the extended techniques he had developed over the years - overblowing, shrieking altissimo notes and multiphonics.

- RA displays his non-metric drumming and plays multidirectional rhythms, creating a fluid, rolling wave of percussion rather than playing a traditional steady swing beat.

- The musicians as a whole are not bound by traditional chord progressions. They play with harmonic openness, outside the conventional harmony.

And what makes it distinct from other works of the period, so it may be not:

- Unlike his live performances of this time, Stellar Regions has clear, distinct thematic melodies at the beginning and end of most tracks, providing structural anchors.

- JG‘s bass playing also acts as a massive anchor. Because he uses repetitive and modal tools to anchor the root note, the musicians never fully detach from a tonal center.

- AC‘s chord playing on piano provides a harp-like, meditative harmonic cushion. It is free-form, but it’s deeply melodic and highly tonal as well.

Conclusion:

Stellar Regions uses the vocabulary of free jazz (energy, microtonality, open rhythm, non-metrical drumming) but pours it into shorter, concise and deeply spiritual tone poems, finding a balance between freedom and structure. Instead of plainly breaking the rules or „tearing down walls“, it is all about using freedom to achieve an emotional and spiritual state.

What stands out

I like the more lyrical pieces on this album very much. They really define this album and give it a distinct place in Coltrane’s late period timeline. They a show us a side of Coltrane’s final months that makes already a shift to a more spiritual atmosphere. They touch my heart and make me wistfully curious if more of that kind would have come flowing out of that musician.

Offering (# 5) is a majestic ballad, the emotional center of the session and arguably the most structurally complete composition on the album. The track opens with a beautiful, hymn-like melody, played on tenor with incredible tenderness, sounding like a religious lament. AC enters with resonant low-register block chords. Coltrane’s solo moves away from the melody into intense, microtonal and split-tones. However, because AC sustains chords instead of playing dissonant clusters, Coltrane’s own fiery playing never sounds angry or harsh, but soulful, like a spiritual cry. The track concludes with a return to the opening theme. By the time the melody returns, the storm has cleared, leaving a sense of exhausted peace.

Seraphic Light (#1). If Offering is a grounded prayer, Seraphic Light,the album’s starter, is pure cosmic ascension. While it has a more active, rolling rhythm play from RA, it remains one of the most texturally dense tracks on the album. This track begins not with a saxophone melody but with a rumbling of drums and cymbals from RA. AC establishes a continuous tremolo on the piano, while JG plays an aggressive, bowing bass drone. RA provides a rapid, metrically free tapestry of cymbals and snaredrum hits throughout. When Coltrane enters on saxophone, he plays short, declarative motifs that rise upward in pitch, bypassing a traditional jazz melody entirely. On this track, AC abandons all traditional piano performance boundaries. She does not simply play chords to back up a soloist, but creates a massive swirl of sound. The track builds to a peak where Coltrane‘s solo moves into the stratosphere, played in the extreme altissimo register of his instrument. Yet even throughout this peak, JG‘s grounding bass and AC‘s rolling waves prevent the track from becoming exhausting. It remains radiant and luminous.

Does this album show us a path to the (unrealized) future?

Now, as this year marks the 100th anniversary of John Coltrane’s birth and these recordings are almost his last notes to be captured on tape, it is a compelling „what if“-question: Where would he likely have moved to from here? Does this February 1967 recording – especially its lyrical core (see above) - give us a blueprint of what would have come?

That is open for debate. Coltrane, sadly, recorded this music just five months before his death. We will never definitely know for sure how his music would have evolved if he had lived on. In his Allmusic review (4 ½* by the way), Scott Yanow argues that Stellar Regions offers no real hints of a future path.

However, it may as well be stated that these recordings „represent a suggestion of the evolution his music would have taken had his life not been cut so short“ (David S. Wild, author of the liner notes, June 1995). Stellar Regions implies that Coltrane was heading toward a "chamber free-jazz" where total freedom was guided by internal discipline and structured devotion. Also, Stellar Regions suggests that the 1970s version of John Coltrane would have been less aggressive and far more compositional, spiritual and influenced by eastern aesthetics. It would have been intriguing to see him join his wife Alice in making the shift to World and Spiritual Jazz. Coltrane was already moving toward the cross-cultural, transcendent, meditative music of the 1970s, as evidenced in Alice Coltrane‘s (Journey in Satchidananda, 1971) and Pharoah Sanders‘ albums recorded after his death.

This session from mid-February 1967 still proves that avant-garde music can be profoundly beautiful, universal and divine.

*The liner notes from June 1995 by David S. Wild confirm that the track To Be, released on Expression, with Coltrane on flute and PS rejoining him on piccolo flute, was not actually recorded on that same date, although being credited to that date on its original release.

Also note: a contemporary review in German by Konrad Heidkamp from 09.12.1995, DIE ZEIT 50/1995, is still available for registered readers of DIE ZEIT.

---

Klaus Kitzinger, born in 1967 in Landshut, Lower Bavaria, Germany. Still lives and works there in his daytime job as a lawyer specializing in construction law. A faithful follower of FJB, he got his first hold of free jazz as a teenager in the early to mid 1980‘s, when one enthusiastic pub operator actually brought luminaries like Archie Shepp, Sam Rivers, Joseph Jarman, the Sun Ra Arkestra, Jimmy Lyons/Karen Borca and Andrew Cyrille (spelled „Grille“ in the local newspaper) to his provincial hometown. Besides free jazz, he has an interest in (nearly) everything related to Japanese culture, traditional and modern, thanks to being married to Yuka.

John Coltrane 100: Transition and Sunship

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Brian Earley

When John Coltrane died in 1967 the jazz world felt a startling void. With the release of Expression, Coltrane’s final studio album, it must have felt like a narrative had been cut short of its intended ending. After all, unless Trane had recorded material that had never been released, that was it: no more new music from John Coltrane.

We know the story 100 years after Trane’s birth, however. And did he ever record material that had yet to be released! Alice Coltrane worked relentlessly to preserve John’s towering musical legacy, and we know from Andy Beta’s incisive book on her life that after a long day of raising four children on her own, she would put the kids to bed, sit in meditation, and practice the music that meant so much to her and her late husband. What she also did was listen to unreleased recordings by John and prepare them for release.

Among the recordings made public in the immediate years following John’s passing were two absolutely stunning (I can’t emphasize this word enough–stunning!) recordings by the famed Classic Quartet of Trane, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones: Transitionin 1970 and Sun Ship in 1971.

Transition

McCoy Tyner related to writer David Wild that sometimes John would give them two notes, or maybe just a scale, as the basis of a composition before they recorded. The title track to the album Transition,recorded in the spring of 1965,certainly could be such a piece. The work features a tightly focused quartet that absolutely opens up the gates and begins to tear down the fences. “Transition” is one the group’s wildest, most ferociously open pieces. It’s as though the catalytic power of Ascension or Om has been concentrated into a narrow and controlled conduit. Both the kinetic energy coursing through that conduit and the narrowness of the channel itself create the conditions for tension and combustion.

The “Prayer and Meditation Suite,” on the other hand, is an absolute masterwork. I am of the persuasion that comparing works of Trane to other periods in his life can dangerously undervalue some of his accomplishments. Any suite, be it Meditations or “Prayer and Meditation” would beg comparison with A Love Supreme. Forget all that. “Prayer and Meditation” would stand as one the great works in the jazz canon if it were the only piece Coltrane and the Quartet created. Movement II: “Peace and After” is the sound of a quest for peace complete with all the pain inherent in that search. Movement IV: “Affirmation” picks up where “Transition” left off and rings with crisis, explosiveness, and spiritual urgency.

Violence was always slinking nearby during Coltrane’s life, as it is for us today, and his music embraces this reality, but I would never describe his music as “violent.” Just note the third remaining song on Transition : “Dear Lord.” It is hard for me to imagine there ever existed a world without this vulnerable dedication to peace. Urgency and catharsis. Peace and vulnerability. The circumstances without and the transition within.

Sun Ship

In the nighttime hours of August 26, 1965, John Coltrane and his classic quartet walked into an East Manhattan studio. That year Martin Luther King and hundreds of peaceful protestors were arrested in Selma for wanting voter registration fairness. Malcolm X was shot to death. The first massive contingent of US ground troops landed in Vietnam, and the United States would slaughter tens of thousands of people before the year ended using machine guns and missiles fired from military jets. In Los Angeles, unemployment rates for black Americans grew to levels greater than during the Great Depression, housing discrimination was bolstered by law, and Watts exploded in rioting after a violent encounter between police and a black man.

John Coltrane placed his mouth around his horn and blew. The sound that emerged, a passage of lyrical melody deeply tender and filled with solace, titled “Dearly Beloved,” lifted into the air. John embodied serenity and the path to it. People were dying and being denied their humanity by a power structure that required their destruction, and John never pretended this was not the case. The path to peace traveled through pain, not around it. People are dying right now as you read this, but life’s powerful play goes on, in all of its tragedy and real joy. Afterall, John’s baby boy Ravi had just been born, and John had assembled this collection of musicians to record at night because that day he was busy celebrating his first son, John Jr. 's, first birthday.

Attaining does not come without suffering, but it also arrives with beauty.

Attaining. Sun Ship. Ascent. Amen.

John Coltrane 100: Live at the Village Vanguard Again

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 10:40:00 +0000

By David Cristol

So much has been written about John Coltrane and he's such a widely acknowledged and worshiped figure - one of jazz's top two most iconic artists, along with his once employer Miles Davis - that I don't feel I have anything new to bring to the table. Asked to comment on a favorite Coltrane album, however, I comply, for what it's worth. The first Coltrane album I purchased - a secondhand 1987 CD release - was Live at the Village Vanguard Again, recorded May 28, 1966. Prior to this, I had only heard Coltrane on Miles Davis' Kind of Blue.

Village Vanguard Again was a punch in the gut, a puzzle for the mind and the record that won me over to free jazz for good, although it didn't happen overnight. I initially didn't understand what was going on, what to make of it. But was soon repeatedly attracted by the unhinged, torrential sounds unleashed on lengthy versions of "Naima" (a tender ballad with exquisite chords, here exuding rage and sorrow) and "My Favorite Things" (a distinctly lighthearted song from the movie "The Sound of Music", here given a terminally outrageous, or wonderfully out there treatment, according to your inclinations) interspersed with a six-minutes Jimmy Garrison bass solo. Each time I pressed the play button, I was unable to stop listening until the end of the total running time. The album held some arcane truth I couldn't live without anymore. It was music I had to sort out for myself, keep to myself, not music I could share with friends or relatives, let alone spin at parties... The line up had Alice Coltrane on piano, Pharoah Sanders on tenor sax and flute, Rashied Ali on drums, with Coltrane on tenor, soprano and bass clarinet. I was unaware there was a much-loved Coltrane "classic quartet" then, and that this was not it! Some of the Impulse! catalogue was being reissued at that time (the mid-90s), Sanders' "Tauhid" and "Karma" among the batch, both also expanding my musical outlook. Coltrane's albums and archival releases were dropping in quick succession, each new one a mandatory listen. I stumbled on small-priced, worn out LP copies of "Transition" and "Kulu Se Mama" (both recorded in 1965). I was hooked, although none of those albums, and no other Coltrane record I heard after the 1966 live set, had the same definitive, life-altering effect, or reached the same high as that first exposure to the work.

Could it be that I had started with a peak, a logical conclusion to what had come before? The music was

equal parts perplexing, intimidating, meaningful, dark, luminous, an unrelenting war machine yet brimming with sensitivity, not quite inviting if you were not ready to surrender to its revolutionary approach, but fully uplifting and cleansing if you were.