Scotty's Picks: Top 10 Best New Jazz Releases of 2021
End of the year edition
Top 10 Best New Jazz Releases of 2021 (IMHO)
2021 was quite the fruitful year for new jazz releases. I had fun compiling this list: listening, research and writing included. Three artists made it onto the list from beyond, two who died this year—one studio and one double-live album—and another by a jazz piano legend who left us many years ago; there were two very-much-alive octogenarian band leaders; and five other surprises on there.
Ladies and gents, look no further for your jazz listening and shopping lists; I’ve got the skinny my people.
~10~
Gary Bartz - Jazz is Dead 006
This record, relatively brief in duration, is a follow up to The Midnight Hour (with Adrian Younge on bass and DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammed from the ingenious and rightfully considered ‘classic’ rap ground, A Tribe Called Quest). Gary Bartz got his start back in 1958, when as a young man, he studied at the Julliard Music Conservatory. The music on the record is futuristic, while staying true to its roots. It is in one word: ‘inspiring’.
The first song is ‘Spiritual Ideation’, followed by ‘Visions of Love’.
Next is the great tune, ‘Black & Brown’. ‘Blue Jungles’ is a straight-ahead jazz-funk, which evokes the melody to Coltrane’s ‘Seedya’s Song Flute’ from Giant Steps (Atlantic, ‘59); with some harmonic-minor soloing by Bartz for color, but only sporadically and closer yet, only momentarily, whilst afloat deep from the shores in the sea of the blues idiom, chords and scales, et al. Next comes ‘Day by Day', a heavy-duty-yet-sprightly and happy song. Gary Bartz is 81-years-old, but he plays with the curiosity and vigor of a twentysomething prodigy. The song features a great black-and-white music video concerning the fight for Black rights in the United States, and includes a small chorus of vocalists which sounds ever-so-pretty. The three-minute, ‘Distant Mode’, is next. All of the songs on the album are relatively short, with ‘Day by Day’, clocking in at just-shy-of-five-minutes, being the longest.
The music on the album is too funky to be straight-ahead, but some might say it is too straight-ahead to be considered ‘acid jazz’. Still, if forced to pigeon-hole this sound, I’d classify it as a kind of ‘acid jazz’. The 4:14 song, ‘The Message’, comes next. The last song on the brief LP is ‘Soulsea’, yet another gut-punching original by the legendary octogenarian, Gary Bartz. All in all, a great album, proving that not only does Bartz still have the chops to capture the world’s attention, but Adrian Younge and A Tribe Called Quest’s Ali Shaheed Muhammed are two of the hippest cats out there.
~9~
Chris Potter (Circuits Trio) - Sunrise Reprise
My first pick is the great new album by Chris Potter, entitled, Sunrise Reprise, on Edition Records. The lineup is Chris Potter on tenor and soprano saxophone, clarinet, flute and “sampler/keyboard”. James Francies is the regular keyboardist, and the well-known and outrageously talented, Eric Harland, is on drums. The first tune, ‘Sunrise and Joshua Trees’, consists of giant harmonic steps (no Coltranian pun intended), and experiments with the use of whole-tones. So if you think this is strange-sounding music, bordering on the avant-garde, you’d be correct. The second track is entitled, ‘Southbound’, and features a great saxophone solo, really out, but in-the-pocket, with funky clock-like drumming by the vicious-yet-subdued Harland. The third track, ‘Serpentine’, rides in on a volume fade-in, and states a strange melody, as were the previous two. The next tune is much slower, a little piece entitled, ‘The Peanut’. It is a lovely, Coltranesque, tableaux of African-American life and the silent slavery in capitalism, born from the plantation, hitting a bump at the trickle-down-economics of the Reagan-years, and up to a perilously fevered pitch during the Trump-years and the anarchy and near civil war we are now reaching as one United States of America; and perfect showcase of what Chris can do on tenor sax to boot.
The final track on the album is a two-song medley: ‘Nowhere, Now Here/Sunrise Reprise’. Potter starts out on flute for the intro, but switches over to tenor saxophone. The track is a monstrous 24-minutes and 25-seconds of pure fun. On ‘Nowhere, Now Here’, the saxophone solo is blazing, with nice funky drumming by Eric Harland. Potter blows his ass off, and also notable is the piano accompaniment, which turns into a piano solo at about the 5:00-mark. The ‘Sunrise Reprise’ section of the mini-suite is a slowed down, ambient live jungle funk, that sounds like Eric Harland took a lesson from Questlove of The Roots. Finally, the saxophone solo comes in and Chris Potter dominates. Meanwhile, the synthesizer, played by James Francies, does wonderful things to add some dim colors and diverse textures into the mix. They return to the head around 19-minutes into the track. The song fades out with another funky beat on the ambient tip, with textures provided by what sounds like a Moog.
~8~
Chick Corea Akoustic Band: LIVE
Sadly, Chick Corea died this year on February 9th. But this live album, released on Concord Jazz, is supposed to be a reunion of the great trio, the Akoustic Band, featuring the great John Patitucci on double-bass and Dave Weckl on drums. The double-album begins with the song, ‘Morning Sprite’. This tune swings hard, and builds and builds in intensity, especially once Chick’s piano solo comes in. At about 6:15, the piano and drums start trading-fours for a seemingly endless repetition of choruses.
Next up is ‘Japanese Waltz’, a lovely tune, but one which sounds very tricky to play, followed by ‘That Old Feeling’. A 9:30 cover of Duke Ellington’s timeless standard, ‘In a Sentimental Mood’ is next, then it’s on to ‘Rhumba Flamenco’ from the 2004 album, Touchstone, which is a challenging composition that is tons of fun to listen to, and runs over 14-minutes in duration. The beautiful composition, ‘Summer Night’ comes next, followed by ‘Humpty Dumpty’.
Finally, we don’t have to wait any longer, as next comes the constantly changing rhythmic feel and melodic shock-to-the-system of the common jazz standard—always pleasing to the ear, and interesting in how it’s going to be performed and by whom—‘On Green Dolphin Street’ by Bronisław Kaper (1947). This version features a long intro, including a killer piano solo by Chick Corea. At 6:23, David Weckl plays a mean drum solo, and Chick stabs at the chords sporadically in order to delineate where they are holding in the chart, (like Weckl can’t count for himelf, [as if]; but the effect is a cool aesthetic dynamic to throw into the mix). The outro jam to ‘On Green Dolphin Street’ is the prettiest part of the song, with lots of colors coming from the drums, and airy Hancockian suspension chords from Chick, painting the finishing touches onto the finished product.
The 11-minute and 45-second composition entitled, ‘Eternal Child’, is a monstrosity of a tune, and opens with a long cadenza by John Patitucci on a bowed double-bass, if he were forced to be more subdued than his two bandmates on the earlier tracks up until now, then now’s his chance—and he makes the absolute most out of the opportunity. After the bass cadenza—the lovely performance with the large bow, instead of the usual pizzicato—comes an extended series of measures of solo piano. Then, eventually, all the parts fall into place to create one swinging whole monolith of that jazz sound, which makes us long for the days when Chick Corea was walking the Earth, working with all different musicians on all different projects, touring and of course, selling-out the Blue Note Cafe, where I watched him perform—silently—outside the glass window of the club one winter night in the Greenwich Village. The plucked bass solo is incredibly beautiful, and Chick is not shy comping behind him chordally and more, as he usually also does during percussion solos. Just before it reaches the 11:00-mark, it introduces a new spin on the harmonic structure, a cadence of sorts, and floats away into a sea of appreciative applauding. The song ‘You and the Night and the Music’ comes next. It swings motherfucking hard, and Chick reasserts that he is the boss and not the one to be messed with, same goes for Weckl and Patitucci; whilst there can only be one boss soloist in a jazz trio at once, it takes heroism to comp with the reliability of a finely-tuned handmade clock, with pathos. These guys are as good as it gets. Next up comes a second take of ‘Humpty Dumpty’. The first one is known as ‘Humpty Dumpty (set one)’, and the second? You guessed it!…‘Humpty Dumpty (set two)’. Again, the song starts slow and winds up moving faster with a lot of chord changes, like bebop, like much of the music performed on Chick Corea Akoustic Band: LIVE. The final song on the double-live-release features the talented Gayle Moran Corea on vocals and is entitled, ‘You’re Everything’. The result is a little eerie, and a great way to leave off a wonderful live trio reunion album, and to cap one of the most legendary careers in jazz history.
Goodbye Chick, wherever you are.
~7~
Kenny Garrett - Sounds from the Ancestors
On the Jazz.FM91 website, Adam Feibel wrote (6/2/2021):
For his 20th album as a leader, Kenny Garrett combines the musical history of Detroit with the rich influence of his ancestry. Sounds From the Ancestors is the alto saxophonist and composer’s fifth album with Mack Avenue [Records].
That quote does well to backup the specs on the new Kenny Garrett drop, but you’re going to have to listen to it for yourself if you want to be touched by this musician’s magic, if you’re among the uninitiated.
The first song, ‘It’s Time to Come Home’, has a title that reminds us of Zionism and the ‘Ingathering of the Exiles’; and questions how marginalized peoples such as those of ancient Israel, and those in the African Diaspora who originated from that great and mighty continent, tend under colonialism, be it of the Roman Empire, or the church and state of Spain, England, France, or the United States of America. The song itself is a rhythmic tribal jam of percussive saxophone blowing over West African harmonies and rhythms. Rhythm is expressed and the crux focus of the piece, as if there were tribal-dance choreography to accompany the music. The second song is a tribute to the late, great, trumpeter, Roy Hargrove. It is a classic jazz-funk piece, almost reminding us of the style of Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker’s solo works, and especially their collaborative work for James Brown and the J.B.’s. Predictable enough, it is entitled, ‘Hargrove’, and is followed up by the tune, ‘When Days Were Different’, a long stretched-out number with female vocals and a dangerous contagion of funked-up boogie-down soul dance.
A blurb in AllMusic.com reads:
Garrett's core band includes pianist Vernell Brown, Jr. bassist Corcoran Holt, drummer Ronald Bruner, Jr., and percussionist Rudy Bird. He also enlisted a guest cast that includes drummer Lenny White, pianist/organist Johnny Mercier, trumpeter Maurice Brown, conguero Pedrito Martinez, and batá percussionist Dreiser Durruthy, as well as a handful of singers. In addition to playing alto saxophone, Garrett plays electric piano.
The fourth track, ‘For Art’s Sake’ is a funky-yet-hard-swinging and driving tune, somewhat up the same alley as the previous selection, ‘When Days Were Different’. The piano comping does wonders both alone and underneath soloist, Kenny Garrett. The piano has locked into a clicking-rhythm mind-meld with the percussionist, while Garrett’s solo meanders and hisses like a snake. The name of the track: ‘For Art’s Sake’ is an aesthetic concept usually heard in the French tongue and spelled: ‘L’art por l’art’: ‘Art for art’s sake’. It could also be a tribute to drummer Art Blakey, pianist Art Tatum, or the formerly royal Arthur, offspring of Harry and Meghan. (Wait, that’s Archie! Duh.) (Disclaimer: Later, with a glance at the Mack Avenue Records website, it became known that the ‘Art’ stands for Art Tatum, actually. My first guess.)
The upbeat ‘What Was That’ comes next, followed by the third-to-last song on this great album, entitled, ‘Soldiers of the Fields/Soldats de Champ’. The song may be about the war for Haitian independence and the fight for survival on the colonial plantation, or a matter of the nation of Nigeria, or any number of allusions. The tenor saxophone blowing on this tune by the maestro, Garrett himself, is sure proof and evidence of why the contemporary-jazz stalwart has done so well by his career and even won himself a GRAMMY®. The piano also takes a nice staccato improvisational run for a few choruses, probably less than Garrett, or perhaps the same amount evenly; you’d have to count, and that’s easier said than done if you’re not up on the bandstand or in the studio with them, swinging away and looking at the chart. This is the longest song of the album, stretching to three-minutes shy of the 11:00-minute mark. During the second half of the tenor saxophone solo we hear hints of Joe Lovano, Pharoah Sanders and, who else?…The ‘Trane’ himself, a powerful Eliotian triumvirate to cull inspiration and influence from.
The following blurb comes from KennyGarret.com and will give you some background about the artist, if you don’t already know:
With his illustrious career that includes hallmark stints with Miles Davis, Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers, Donald Byrd, Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw and the Duke Ellington Orchestra, as well as a heralded career as a solo artist that began more than 30 years ago, Kenny Garrett is easily recognized as one of modern jazz’s brightest and most influential living masters. And with the marvelous Sounds From The Ancestors, the GRAMMY® Award-winning Garrett shows no signs of resting on his laurels.
And from the website of Mack Avenue Records we read:
Composer/saxophonist Kenny Garrett emerged as a distinctive voice on the national scene in 1978 with an undisputed aptitude for emotive melodic phrasing that led him to collaborations with Woody Shaw, Freddie Hubbard, Art Blakey and Miles Davis. With Sounds from the Ancestors, Garrett remembers the spirit of the sounds of African ancestors from church services, recited prayers, songs from the work fields, Yoruban chants and African drums, alongside tributes to Roy Hargrove and two drum pioneers — Art Blakey and Tony Allen — who all looked into the past to influence the future sound and evolution of jazz.
The title-track, ‘Sounds from the Ancestors’ is a traditional West African rhythmic groove, with all the percussionists going crazy at once, and wild West African male vocals, singing tribal spirituals colorfully; almost as colorful as the saxophone played by Kenny Garrett, that itself can’t help but sound to me just a tad derivative; whereas, on the other hand, the background music he has created, produced, directed, conducted is a wonderful, refreshing splash of originality, while it too is reminiscent sounding of many South to Mid-West African selections from the World Music genre. If you’ve been paying attention to the whole album, then you’ll recognize the record’s final track as being a variation on the opening track of Sounds from the Ancestors: ‘It’s Time to Come Home (Original)’. This one supersedes its prequel in prettiness and all-out sublimity. It fades out into a mellow percussive saxophonistic display of musical strangeness and raw emotion, much the way the prior variation at the opening of the record did.
~6~
Charles Lloyd & The Marvels - Tone Poem
If you’re not a connoisseur of ‘music appreciation’, then you might not know. A ‘tone poem’ is a piece of music, originally meant to be symphonic, but can be anything otherwise, which is composed so as to evoke a written poem or other piece of literature, painting, landscape, et al. Furthermore, the Deutsch translation of the term ‘tone poem’ is ‘Tondichtung’, and according to others’ research was first pioneered by the German composer and tenor singer, Carl Loewe in 1828, and then further used by Franz Liszt, Hungarian composer of phenomenal and timeless fame on his composition, ‘Symphonische Dichtung’.
The 83-year-old brass and reed man, Charles Lloyd, and his band, The Marvels, put out an excellent album this year, entitled, Tone Poem, the third by this lineup. The album was recorded and distributed by Blue Note Records. The dissonant arrangements on the album remind one of early Ornette Coleman, circa-’59, the year he released The Shape of Jazz to Come for Atlantic Records, especially the cover of Coleman’s epic free-jazz standard, ‘Peace’, which is the first track of the album. And then a cover of Ornette Coleman’s ‘Rambling’. All of the pieces come together on each song: bass; electric guitar; pedal-steel guitar and horns that will make the hair on the back of your next stand up. Among the other composers of the music heard on the album, is not just Charles Lloyd and the aforementioned Ornette Coleman. There are also arrangements of music composed by The Beach Boys and even Leonard Cohen. The guitarist on the album is the hard-working and well-behaved jazz guitar superstar, Bill Frisell, with some lovely, out-there pedal-steel playing by Greg Leisz; and featuring bassist Reuben Rogers and well-known drummer, Eric Harland, whom we now recognize from his work with Chris Potter and Circuits Trio, also this year (my #10 pick).
The title-track, ‘Tone Poem’, is a lovely piece, and features excellent playing from everybody, especially the saxophone and pedal-steel.
The two longest songs on the album are a cover of Thelonious Monk’s ‘Monk’s Mood’, and the Gabor Szabo composition, ‘Lady Gabor’, which Lloyd once performed with Szabo and Chico Hamilton back in 1963; so, it is a refreshing return.
~5~
Breathe - Dr. Lonnie Smith
The album, ‘Breathe’, by Dr. Lonnie Smith is the final release by the soulful organ maestro, (who also tragically passed away this year of 2021). It was Smith’s third recording of a triumphant return to the Blue Note Records label. The line-up is: Dr. Lonnie Smith on organ; Jonathan Kreisberg on guitar; Johnathan Blake on drums and Richard Bravo on percussion, and on some of the other tracks there are featured female and male vocalists and a four-part horn section.
The opening track, ‘Why Can’t We Live Together?’, is one of three songs in which Smith and the band are joined by New York Punk Rock legend, Iggy Pop on vocals. The tune is a gentle and moody bossa, with great and relevant lyrics which dream of coexistence between humans...perhaps all animal life. It may seem to the cynical contemporary American audience as not tone-deaf, but unrealistically idealistic. Though, you wouldn’t second guess the Hebrew prophets and sages, Christ, Mohammad, and say, a handful of the most influential philosophers of the last two millennia. So, I believe Dr. Lonnie Smith, and yes, Iggy Pop too, when they [really, just Iggy] sing the vocals: “No more war/ No more war/ Just a little peace in this world…Everybody wants to live together/ Why can’t we be together?” The song is a cover of a composition by the same name, by one Timmy Thomas. Some of the songs on the album, such as, ‘Bright Eyes’, features a four-part horn section, consisting of John Ellis on tenor saxophone; Sean Jones on trumpet; Jason Marshall on baritone saxophone and Robin Eubanks on trombone. ‘World Weeps’ is a ballad that runs over 12-minutes in duration and is performed only by a trio culled from the aforesaid musicians included in the session.
The tune, ‘Pilgrimage’ features Alicia Olatuja on vocals, continuing Smith’s pattern of showcasing different talents on each track. It is a low, but heartfelt spiritual. Next up is a funky interpretation of the Thelonious Monk and Kenny Clark standard, ‘Epistrophy’. Hearing the organ and horns on this one, as well as the dirty wah guitar would send Monk to heaven all over again. Also to be noted, this is a live track.
‘Sunshine Superman’ is another one of the highlights of the record. Written by British Bob Dylan competitour of the ‘60s, Donovan, the song, like the album’s opening-track, is sung by Iggy Pop on lead vocals. The last song, also sung by Iggy Pop is ‘Move Your Hand’, not as affecting as the two previous tracks which feature Iggy Pop, nor is it quite as soulful as the rest of the band. But all in all the record is a smashing success, if not in sales—which I’m sure it did just fine, especially on vinyl, and then considering the sales spike that must have been driven by Smith’s untimely passing.
Thanks for the music, Dr. Smith; we’ll always love you here on planet Earth.
~4~
Oscar Peterson Quartet - A Time For Love - Live in Helsinski, 1987
The next pick is pianist Oscar Peterson and the album A Time for Love: The Oscar Peterson Quartet – Live in Helsinki, 1987 on Two Lions/Mack Avenue Records. The title-track, written by Milt ‘Bags’ Jackson is performed by Peterson, almost completely solo, but goes way back in the repertoire, meaning Peterson has also performed the song with others, most notably collaborator, Milt Jackson. Around six-minutes in, we hear the guitar play some tricks, and head out. David Young plays bass, Joe Pass plays guitar, and Martin Drew is on skins.
Other highlights of the 1987 concert released on Black Friday, November 26, 2021, are the Duke Ellington Medley: ‘‘Take The “A” Train’, ‘Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,’ ‘Come Sunday’, ‘C-Jam Blues’, ‘Lush Life’ and finally, ‘Caravan’. During the medley, Joe Pass on guitar and leader, Oscar Peterson, on piano, take turns playing excellent and deeply soulful solos. The medley takes up almost 19-minutes of run-time.
The tune, ‘Blues Etude’, is also a treat, with the whole band performing at once, overturning the muted dynamics, and instrumental representatives, which are mostly the guitar and piano.
Also notable is ‘A Salute to Bach (Medley)’: ‘Allegro’ / ‘Andante’ / ‘Bach’s Blues’. Never has their been such a soulful interpretation of the most famous composer of the baroque-era. The song ‘Sushi’, reminds us of John Coltrane’s ‘Impressions’, but is different than it when all is said and done. Also included is a fine rendition of ‘Waltz for Debby’, the Bill Evans composition, performed solo by Peterson.
The recording credits are as follows:
Producer: Kelly Peterson
Recording Engineer: Heikki Hölttä
Recording Engineer: Pentti Männikkö
Mixing Engineer, Mastering Engineer: Blaise Favre
Music Publisher: Folkways Music Publishers Inc. [BMI]
~3~
Jihye Lee Orchestra - Daring Mind
One of the most striking talents out there in big-band arrangement, and overall jazz music acumen is Jihye Lee. Her new album, which is her sophomore effort, Daring Mind, is just over one-hour in duration and contains nine original compositions.
The first song of the album contains a music video, shot in the studio with the orchestra and Jihyee conducting the whole group. The song is ‘Relentless Mind’, featuring Sean Jones and Alan Ferber. The next tune is in the same thought-span, as far as nomenclature goes; it is another allusion to the name of the album; this one’s called ‘Unshakable Mind’. On the album itself, there is no title-track, no ‘Daring Mind’, the song. Just the first two tracks: ‘Relentless Mind’ and ‘Daring Mind’. Then, later in the record there is a ‘Revived Mind’ and even a ‘Dissatisfied Mind’.
The sound on the second-track is huge, and reminds us of Gil Evans’ work with Miles Davis, in its rich brass arrangement, as well as—at times—Duke Ellington’s soundtrack to the motion picture, Anatomy of a Murder (Columbia, ‘59). Lee is a young master, there is no doubt about it. The song, ‘I Dare You’, features great low-register brass on showcase. The tenor sax solo on this song sounds great, almost like Ornette Coleman playing alto sax, the way the sound of the horn bends and squeals.
‘Revived Mind’, which starts with a line played on a flute sounds the most reflective of Jihyee Lee’s South Korean ethnicity. On her website, Jihyee’s bio reads:
She has organized successful crowdfunding campaigns for April, her 2017 debut album, as well as Daring Mind, her sophomore effort, releasing in March 26, 2021 on Motéma Music. April was was co-produced by Greg Hopkins and recorded with Berklee faculty members and top jazz professionals from the Boston area; the album revealed Lee’s extraordinary gifts at the helm of a top-tier large ensemble, making original music with what The Village Voice called “chamber-like textures, involved harmony and sectional counterpoint, and persistent rhythmic drive.”
Daring Mind, the follow-up, is produced by the innovative composer and Secret Society bandleader Darcy James Argue, with renowned trumpeter Sean Jones appearing as a special guest. It presents compositions from Lee’s Mind Series, including her BMI Charlie Parker Jazz Composition Prize-winning ‘Unshakable Mind’ and her Manny Albam Commission piece ‘Revived Mind.’ The music reflects her struggles, doubts, and hopes while living in the amazing city of New York. All the compositions explore the human mind, heart and soul, the various states of the human psyche from confusion to rage to enlightenment.
The next tune flirts with a concept (introduced to me as pathemathos) from Greek philosophy, ‘Struggle Gives You Strength’, featuring the up-and-coming trumpet virtuoso, Sean Jones. His solo is outstanding, he doesn’t show off, he doesn’t need to, but when you hear the ‘C’ brass instrument blowing over the arrangements, with the subdued sound of the other brass instruments in the background, maintaining the harmony, you know you’re in the presence of young masters: both Jones and Lee. At 5:00, the trumpet solo gets increasingly soulful.
The last three songs on the album are: ‘Why is That?’, ‘Dissatisfied Mind’, and a just-shy-of 10-minute piece, simply entitled with the initials or acronym: ‘GB’. ‘GB’ starts out as a slow but powerful composition, capturing all the colors of the orchestra at once in an Ellingtonian arrangement of harmonic and melodic structure. It is not a mistake that I ranked this album as highly as I did. It is a gorgeous outing, a killer of an iconoclast.
~2~
John Coltrane - ‘A Love Supreme’ Live in Seattle, 1965
Don’t know that much about jazz, but want to? Heard the names John Coltrane and Miles Davis, but aren’t that familiar. Let me start by explaining that these two musicians, the two most definitive, if not the essence of the modern jazz movement in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, were on a roll beginning in this era, for Davis for the next two or three decades, and for ‘Trane’, until his untimely, unfair death in 1967 (just two years after the performance of this live recording), in which they produced what would be called by today’s standards, “concept albums”, not unlike, or exactly as The Pink Floyd has done since the late 1960s and early ‘70s. We’re not talking about The Pink Floyd and classic rock, though, and we’re not even talking about Miles Davis (not this year, anyway). We are talking about the great John Coltrane, who did most of his recording on two labels. First, Atlantic Records, on which the releases were not really conceptual but each featured a tune which was, and could as well have been a jumping off point for the rest of the album[s]. Blue Train was released in 1958 and features some early dabbling with modal jazz over blues forms, predating even Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue on which, as being a crux of and the first tenor sax chair in Davis’ ‘First Great Quintet’, Coltrane performs on each song, alongside fellow tenor saxophonist, Cannonball Adderley. ‘Giant Steps’ is the title-track to the 1959 release on Atlantic Records that deals with jumping through whole-tone chord-changes that come quick as lightning and don’t stop their attack, circling in thirds, as well as strangely resolving the far-separated-interval[s] harmonic-structure with the circle of fifths. Olé was released on Atlantic Records in ‘61, and if it were all in the phrygian mode of the title-track, would be his answer to Miles Davis and Gil Evans’ tour-de-force, Sketches of Spain. More momentous, in the same year, John Coltrane put out My Favorite Things, which glanced ahead towards world music, namely classical Indian and other Eastern scales and drones which Trane would continue to explore throughout the rest of the decade, but note: here, only on the title-track. During his years recording for Impulse! Records, you could say that he got a little more daring; probably because he had more freedom. So, as far as concept albums go, such as I compared to those of the bulk of the career of The Pink Floyd (when Roger Waters and David Gilmour were united still, and after the strange and unceremonious departure of Syd Barrett), the point I want to bring concerns not Coltrane’s work for Atlantic Records, but for the strictly-jazz label, Impulse! On Impulse!, Trane put out such conceptual masterpieces that I draw this parallel to The Floyd or Brian Eno, and call them concept albums, an expression which most likely didn’t yet exist in the mid-’60s; and probably could have been coined by critics in describing the studio work of The Beatles. Let’s see...going in chronological order: ‘61 brought the Africa Brass Sessions and of course Live! At the Village Vanguard; ‘63 brought Live at Birdland, ‘64 was both Crescent and A Love Supreme (which I’ll eventually get to, it being the point of this section of the list, and perhaps the entire post itself). In ‘65 Coltrane recorded a lot of work, some released while he was living, others, posthumously: Ascension; the mysterious Kulu Sé Mama (but it all is), and the album, Meditations.
These just mentioned are only a smattering of some of John Coltrane’s music on the two labels he most frequently recorded under. There really is no one Coltrane album to define the phenomenon. If you had to press me on it, then the trifecta: Giant Steps, My Favorite Things, and A Love Supreme come to mind. Little did I know, prior to its release earlier this year, that the wonderful four-part suite, A Love Supreme, recorded in 1964 on Impulse! Records was also played live in concert by John Coltrane and whomever he was playing out with at the time. I am referring to a July 1965 recording from the Jazz à Juan jazz festival in Juan-les-Pins, Antibes, France.
When I heard that Impulse(!) would be dropping A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle, 1965, I nearly pissed my pants in excitement and anxious anticipation. The lineup is: Jimmy Garrison on bass, Elvin Jones on drums and McCoy Tyner on piano, but with the addition of Coltrane’s male protege, Pharoah Sanders on tenor sax and percussion (his female protege being his own wife, Alice). There is also an alto saxophone on the bandstand played by Carlos Ward, a second double-bass, played by Donald Garrett and the recording was made by one Joe Brazil, actually a saxophonist himself. Now, YouTube is where you can now find the two live versions of A Love Supreme from France (July, ‘65) and Seattle (October, ‘65).
Now, ladies and gentlemen without further ado, I give you John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle, 1965.
The first part of the suite, entitled—remember this(?)—‘Acknowledgment’ is much like the original, in that you can pick it out by ear quite easily, but is much longer and more drawn out, stretching impressively to the 21:54-mark of the recording’s runtime. Coltrane finally comes in between 5:10-11, after the long rhythm section intro. Nothing special, just a funky vamp which stays constant throughout against the formidable harmonic variables of the tenor sax of John Coltrane. At around 20:00, the band falls out one-by-one, leaving just the percussion of Pharoah Sanders and perhaps Elvin Jones.
After a two-and-a-half minute musical interlude, we turn to Part II of the suite, entitled ‘Resolution’. Here we hear Coltrane go off on his tenor saxophone solo without any restraints, at least a lot less than he seemed to be showing during the performance of ‘Acknowledgment’, which was in and of itself tight. Elvin Jones is the loudest and most impressive, but Trane is blowing so loud that Tyner could be slamming on the keys of his piano with all his might, and still get drowned-out. Trane’s pathos-laden playing is wild; controlled, but wild. After a while, McCoy’s piano becomes more audible, adding another dimension to the harmony for Coltrane to expand his screeching, squealing; wild, albeit in control.
This is followed by what is called ‘Interlude 2’. At six-minutes and change, this segment strictly features a great drum solo from Elvin Jones.
Out of the drum solo ‘Interlude 2’ comes music familiar to our ears today—as it must have been back then to the Seattle audience at The Penthouse Club, back on October 2, 1965—it is ‘Part III: Pursuance’. There is a major departure between this, the live (or one of the live) version[s], and the studio recording by Rudy Van Gelder in New Jersey from the prior year. At about 3:30, Coltrane goes absolutely mad, making his saxophone sound like it has been given human life, it is pulsating, breathing, placed for a while under a voodoo spell thought impossible, but reality tricks you—plays games with your comfort and expectations. At around the 5:00-point, McCoy Tyner steps to the plate for a piano solo, and it is quite beautiful, McCoy can never go wrong. This version is 15-minutes and 27-seconds in runtime on the recording. McCoy impressively lifts the dynamic, felt mostly by Elvin Jones on drums during his solo, showing what he’s learned about the mysterious craft that is A Love Supreme in one-year or so of studying, practicing and playing with the suite’s composer.
Next is ‘Interlude 3’ and ‘Interlude 4’ followed by the meditative conclusion of the suite, ‘Part IV: Psalm’. If it’s possible to imagine, this version of ‘Psalm’ is even sexier, with an even deeper, wiser soul than the Rudy Van Gelder-recorded ‘64 studio version.
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Promises - Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra
This one, like Gary Bartz and Charles Lloyd, is up there in years, but HE’S ALIVE(!), unlike John Coltrane and Oscar Peterson. Boo! This year, he scared us with music so sublime, you’ll want to cry if you haven’t heard it yet, and if you have, like millions around the world, and you listened alone, and you didn’t shed a tear for the aesthetic beauty, the screaming silence, the silent boom, I’ll want to hear from you in the comments. It’s not that we don’t expect works of musical genius to spew forth from musical geniuses. After all, Pharoah Sanders gave us Karma (Impulse!, ‘69) and Harvest (India Navigation, ‘77); as if he didn’t cut his teeth performing with none other than perhaps the greatest modern jazz man of all time, John Coltrane, and his widow, Alice Coltrane, as well as many others.
The album was released on Luaka Bop Records—the label spearheaded by David Byrne of Talking Heads fame—on which label other classics have been released, such as for example—off the top of my head—the sophisticated, catchy, minimalist, 4-track early ‘70s R&B album, Inspiration Information, by Shuggie Otis.
Floating Points, which Pharoah composed and recorded with British electronic musician, Sam Shepherd (a.k.a Floating Points) and The London Symphony Orchestra is divided into nine movements sans titles. The music is very ambient, very inquisitive and exploring; relaxing and meditative; defining a new age in sound, without being too new-age(y).
According to a March 26, 2021 article in Paste by Zach Schonfeld, Promises is the “first studio album by Pharoah” in upwards of a decade, and the first for Floating Points only since his 2019 release, Crush. The story goes like this, Floating Points put out his debut electronic album in 2015, entitled, Elaenia, and it caught the attention and surprised the ear of then-75-year-old post-modern jazz hero, Pharoah Sanders. Duly noted, Pharoah is more than 40-years Floating Point’s senior, according to Wikipedia.
I disagreed when I saw in Wikipedia that critic, Marcus J. Moore, writing in the magazine, The Nation, on March 30, 2021, compared the new collaboration to Pharoah Sanders’ Black Unity (Impulse!, ‘71), which—as he brings to light—is just one long composition, taking up some 38-minutes of playtime or so. But I don’t quite know where Sir Moore of The Nation gets that, as this work, Promises, consists of not one, but as formerly mentioned, nine movements.
The musical personnel for the album is as follows:
Sam Shepherd (a.k.a. Floating Points): piano, harpsichord, celesta, Fender Rhodes, Hammond B3, Oberheim 4 voice, Oberheim OB-Xa, Solina String Ensemble, Therevox ET-4.3, EMS Synthi, ARP 2600, Buchla 200e, string writing, string arrangements
Pharoah Sanders: tenor saxophone, vocals
London Symphony Orchestra: strings
Sally Herbert: London Symphony Orchestra conductor
Carmine Lauri: London Symphony Orchestra lead
Olli Cunningham: score preparation
Colin Rae: score preparation
The bare bones of the album were recorded in Los Angeles in the summer of 2019, and the strings (violins, violas, cellos, and double basses) were added in a London recording studio in the summer of 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic. The rest—as they say—is history; and take my word for it: this record is going down in it. A triumphant return for Pharoah, a career highlight for Floating Points, and a stellar gig for some members of The London Symphony Orchestra.
Congratulations, Sam ‘Floating Points’ Shepherd, maestro, Pharoah Sanders, and The London Symphony Orchestra on the shining achievement of being my top pick for best jazz album of 2021.