Coltrane's topics - tribe.net

Special radio show

travischaney — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:31:38 GMT

This morning on my weekly two-hour jazz program, The Supersonic Jazz Show,
I will doing a show entirely about the compositions of John Coltrane. My show
starts at 9:00 a.m. PST.

www.radioksoc.net

Thanks,
Travis Chaney

posted in Coltrane - 1 reply

For the Record....

gratephil — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 13:23:04 GMT

John was awarded a Purlitzer prize Monday for his lifelong body of work and "Improvisational" skill. Don't know who on the committee fomented this, but what a great gesture in these times when progression in music is discouraged.....

posted in Coltrane - 1 reply

RIP Alice

SMAC — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 19:49:43 GMT

We'll miss you...

posted in Coltrane - 1 reply

Coltrane Playing "Afro Blue"

LiteraryMasturbator — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 17:39:12 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0Xfsxff4SE

posted in Coltrane - 0 replies

Coltrane at 80 -- a talent supreme (From the San Francisco Chronicle)

LiteraryMasturbator — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 17:53:17 GMT

Happy Birthday To Coltrane!!

In an art form more celebrated for its sinners, John Coltrane, who somewhere over the rainbow will turn 80 on Saturday, held the honor of being the music's first saint.

There have been three figures in jazz history who have changed not only the artistic rules of the game but the social field on which it has been played, as well -- Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker and Coltrane, who died in 1967. The mythic status of each remains in dialogue with the others. Armstrong's entertainment ethic stands in marked contrast to Parker's aloof and self-destructive genius profile, and Coltrane's search for God, redemption and goodness offers a reconciliation and a gentle rebuke to them.

[Download/Listen to Mp3s by John Coltrane:

"Acknowledgement" | "Wise One" | "Greensleeves" | "Lush Life" ]

By the time I began listening to jazz in the early '70s, you felt Coltrane's influence everywhere in African American culture -- in the music, the politics, religion, literature, visual arts, even food. (Trane's natural diet probably drew as many young players to carrot juice as Parker's habits drew to drugs).

But especially in music, unless your name was Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler or Sun Ra, you had to labor under the long shadow of Coltrane. This was true to such a pervasive degree that not until recently have I been able to truly hear Coltrane's music as a sui generis thing. When an artist is so surrounded by admirers, flatterers and copycats, the originality of what he or she proposes can be lost and even trivialized through the rabid impersonations of their style. If artists live long enough, rest on their laurels often enough, that style can become a trap and a parody of itself.

With Coltrane, though, we have the rare fortune to witness, even in retrospect, an artist of promethean will, talent and force create a means of expression that wasn't bent so much toward perfecting a style as it was toward the calibre of the man himself.

Coltrane brought a self-improvement ethic front and center into jazz, and in a way that couldn't allow the man being less evolved than his art. He once said he wanted to be a force for real good in the world, poised against the opposing forces. He also espoused the belief that the pursuit of art required what he described as a "constant polishing of the mirror."

Coltrane's recording career spans 1955 to 1967, during which time he participated in several groundbreaking albums with Miles Davis, two (posthumously released) live recordings from his time with Thelonious Monk, and a formidable resume of albums under his own leadership. What you can't help but hear across the span of all those tracks is a man chasing perfection, or at least his own perfectibility and capacity for profundity.

If we all live long, the artists we love get more intriguing to us in different ways -- some by merely surviving, some by becoming more visibly, audibly vulnerable and even broken (like the Billie Holiday of her swan song "Lady in Satin"), others, like Armstrong, by sustaining their great generosity of spirit into their golden years.

What makes Coltrane unique is that his artistic pursuit was ultimately of things that art can at best only poetically suggest, a breech-birthed unity between humanity and cosmological creation itself. He's also rare in this most improvisational of music -- where the notion of "destination point" is anathema -- of producing one work that looms as his centerpiece, namely, "A Love Supreme," quite possibly the most cherished jazz recording of all time (though Miles' "Kind of Blue," which Trane and Cannonball Adderley performed such saxophone miracles upon, is more often played).

But "A Love Supreme" is the frame through which we have come to view Trane's entire career, and life even, before and after. (Perversely, it's not my personal favorite, a ranking occupied by the little discussed and posthumously released "Sun Ship," "one of the last studio recordings of the same quartet that erected "A Love Supreme," and certainly the most free of the group's free-jazz forays.)

"A Love Supreme" is also, as Ashley Kahn has pointed out, a genuine singularity in that it is a completely secular work about things spiritual and religious, and anything but academic or exhortatory. "A Love Supreme" is as flesh and blood, as animal and erotic even, as a piece of music can get and, at the same time, as philosophical, conceptual, thoughtful and rigorously mysterious.

By the time the Coltrane quartet made it, Coltrane was already the artist to watch in jazz for a host of reasons -- his own mercurial development had garnered the respect of longtime jazz devotees who'd followed him beyond Miles and Monk to his first recordings with Atlantic, especially "Giant Steps." For those jazz listeners impressed with technical legerdemain in jazz, Trane made them sit up and take notice in a way no one since Parker had, and with a voice as personal, as pulsating with life and as mesmerizing.

Trane produced a bona fide hit with his version of "My Favorite Things," and in doing so he found the wherewithal to form a bridge between the new and the old and to openly endorse and even financially support the younger avant garde musicians like Coleman, Archie Shepp and Taylor. This was at a time when members of Coltrane's own generation like Miles and Mingus openly criticized these players and, bizarrely (given who was signifying), even questioned their mental stability.

Coltrane was the kind of artist whose jug could contain worlds, peoples and multitudes and still not compromise or corrupt his own path or plans. The paradox of the free-jazz movement, and what made it so vulnerable to charges of charlatanism, was that it simplified and complicated the jazz experience at the same time. For better or worse, the movement made jazz a more self-consciously, more self-avowedly intellectual, experimental, mystical and political music -- more science fictional (in keeping with the Cold War's space race) and more vocally Afrocentric.

It was also a movement that demanded the audience get with the program or get out, with few concessions to entertainment. This made for a host of real starving artists (Coltrane compatriot Pharoah Sanders lived off wheat germ and peanut butter). The numerous kindnesses the already quite financially secure Trane showed his hungry young lions -- from actual cash loans to buying cats groceries to obtaining record deals -- are now part of jazz legend and further support the claims made for Trane's sainthood.

What has continually surprised me in coming back to Coltrane's oeuvre in recent years is how time has made his music sound even more original and exciting, less definitive of the period than of one man's transcendence of temporality.

Some of this is bluntly because where he was once the dominant voice of a radical Black jazz culture, jazz today is anything but Black and radical in its rhetoric and expression, and there are no dominant figures or dominant ideas. The upshot of this, where Coltrane is concerned, is that where you once couldn't avoid referencing him, today there's little that even remotely comes close to the music he made with McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones and Jimmy Garrison -- unless you count the duo of Trane's wife Alice and son Ravi, who, in their homegrown context, channel Coltrane's widely imitated never-duplicated sound, ideas and depth of feeling in ways more eerie, throat-catching and majestic than one would have ever thought humanly possible.

Honorable mention should also be made of the daring and undaunted Branford Marsalis Quartet, which occasionally performs "A Love Supreme" in its entirety.

What the Coltrane quartet had was two of music's more elusive qualities in combination -- namely, melody and gravitas. You can hear them in certain Black voices that came to fore in the '60s -- Otis Redding, Nina Simone, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X -- and in certain rappers today like Rakim, Nas, GZA. But the Coltrane Quartet, like King, also gave voice and timbre to their heaviest burden, a swollen, implacable compassion for the human condition that required that everything they had be laid on the line. You can't buy that level of commitment off a rack, download it from the Net neither, and you damn sure can't fake it.

You can only deliver it from evil and maybe even bleed for it: Tyner has said he knew it was time for him to leave the band when he saw Trane bleeding from the mouth while blowing and not even seeming to care. That degree of indefatigable discipline and unbridled passion can still render so many fans of the quartet speechless, enchanted, focused, uplifted. An avowed atheist and libertine friend once told me that when he wanted to hear God, he listened to Coltrane. He was hedging his bets that the religious ardor Trane's music invoked in him would be deliverance enough for his sins.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To hear selections of John Coltrane’s music, go to www.sfgate.com/eguide.
Greg Tate's books include "Midnight Lightning: Jimi Hendrix and the Black Experience," "Flyboy in the Buttermilk" and "Everything But The Burden -- What White People Are Taking from Black Culture." He also leads the 20-member conducted-improvisation ensemble Burnt Sugar, the Arkestra Chamber, which has released 10 albums on the truGROID imprint since 2000. Next year will see publication of Tate's annotated "The 100 Best Lyrics of Hiphop" (Penguin Books).

posted in Coltrane - 0 replies

Looking for an alt. celebration

gratephil — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 14:35:11 GMT

..to the Mcmeniman (sic) brewery annual celebration of John's Bday..I don't drink and don't associate Trane with the smell of hops. Anything going on within daytrip distance of Puget Sound?

posted in Coltrane - 0 replies

A simple Thank you

gratephil — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 16:42:15 GMT

..for keeping this important Tribe thriving.

posted in Coltrane - 0 replies

Lincoln Zephyr Commercial

Mikia — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 18:41:05 GMT

Can anyone tell me the name of the jazz song in the Lincoln Zephyr commercial. It's the commercial with the family riding through a neighborhood in Harlem, and at the end they pull up to a classic lincoln with Melvin Van Peebles inside. The poem "Dream Variation", by Langston Hughes is being recited. I really love this song, please respond if you know it. Here is a link to see the commercial. Thanks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3MCBFj8aeQ

posted in Coltrane - 1 reply

John Coltrane live, 1965, playing "Naima".

LiteraryMasturbator — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 21:12:44 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6WwuxqXPOg

posted in Coltrane - 1 reply

Favorites

Eric — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 03:55:36 GMT

My favorite Coltrane records:

Africa Brass, Blue Trane, and Giant Steps.
Yesterday, I was looking at a book on the sessions for "Love Supreme" The inside cover of the book was printed with Coltrane's hand-written poem in praise of God. It was wonderful to read it and see the character of his writing printed in pencil.
-Eric

posted in Coltrane - 5 replies

Favorite version of "My Favorite Things"

Jeremy — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 08:41:48 GMT

I'm curious as to people's favorite version(s) of "My Favorite Things."

Out of the ones I've heard (I've only heard some of them), I would have to say the one on "Afro-Blue Impressions" although "Newport '63" with Roy Haynes is a close second. Also, I've heard one on an import live album called "My Favorite Things" with Eric Dolphy on flute that I like a lot.

posted in Coltrane - 2 replies

Monk and Trane Live at Carnegie Hall

Sun, 25 Sep 2005 07:33:01 GMT

Last year a tape of Monk and Trane playing at Carnegie Hall in 1957 was found and it's coming out on CD this Tuesday! I heard a track from it on the radio tonight, a rendition of Blue Monk and it was great to clearly hear the two great jazz men playing together.

Here's the CD-
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000AV2GCE/qid=1127633484/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-9657287-0656633?v=glance&s=music&n=507846

And here's an article about it-
http://www.globalrhythm.net/WorldNews/BlueNotetoReleaseNewlyDiscoveredTheloniousMonk-JohnColtraneLiveRecording.cfm

posted in Coltrane - 2 replies

HOW SAD! The Coltrane Tribe FORGOT his birthday

drubla_tamset — Sat, 24 Sep 2005 15:43:37 GMT

September 23rd

John Coltrane's Birthday! How could we forget...

I celebrated by dedicating my gig last night in Osaka to John. I will always listen to this man's music, and I can only think a couple of people I can say that about. How about a thread in which we just talk about how much of badass Trane was...

posted in Coltrane - 2 replies

How did the word "hipster" come to mean rich kids in clubs chasin' the latest trends?

tpaulstemarie — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 05:18:11 GMT

A wee blurb from the

INTERNATIONAL HIPSTER COALITION
*******************************
*WE'RE RECLAIMING THE NAME, DAMNIT!*
http://tribes.tribe.net/internationalhipstercoalition?r=10448#

Well, being someone who believes that all things evolve, I still hold true that if the core belief and ideals behind the meaning of a word/definition/concept alters drastically, the word needs reclaiming by those, like me, who believe in the word's true meaning.

That's why I've started this group!

I see the word "hipster" tossed around in use for the most predictable trend chasers and artsy phonies, as well as within the names of bars, clothes, and so on, who realize the marketing savvy behind the new misue of the term. What pisses me off the most is the combination of the overused words "urban" & "hipster". There's nothin' "urban" 'bout a bad pair of sneaks that cost the equivalent of 1/2 a months rent, or the ned to own the "latest" techno-toy - nor is there anything even remotely "hip" or "hep" about this!

The word has also aquired another meaning. That of one who rides the wave of fashion trend. It seems that all of the latest and most expensive toys are a must for this new, phony "hipster" ideal - a copy of MAXIM for the self-masturbatory pleasures of any modern turd!

Then, there's the bland "metrosexuals"...what the fuck? You a man - be a man. You a gal - be the gal ya be, and don't let NOBODY on TV tell ya how your apartment should look, your clothes should be worn, or your sensitivities increased beyond the rational and natural - we are who we are! Common sense has been lost and taken over by books, TV shows, and trenda tellin' us what's best for us - USE YOUR MINDS, CATS!

Those "modern hipsters" (meaning in today's clubs) seem to have attempted to aquire some grating faux-vernacular that pales in comparison to the true hipster lingo, as it's used for rediculous things like "flubber" forbreast implants, "nancy" for ass, and the variation on "lettuce" or "cabbage" for money - they call it "kale"...How very sad their Hummer drivin', Blackberry usin', yoga absorbed worlds must be!

Where are the thinkers and movers and shakers? Where are the folks challenging boundaries, creating the new ideas? The folks who Mailer described as possessing "a psychopathic brilliance" and "a dark, romantic, and yet undeniably dynamic view of existence." The real hipsters are rebels and frontiersmen, where as today's poor bastards seem to be superficial and full of shite.

What happened to true subcultures? They exist, but they've become so commonplace and marketed to death that they're almost a parody of the true idea.

Hell, the terms "Bipster" (blue-collar hipster) and "The Schmooze" (a self-explanatory personality type that describes 98 per cent of any metropolis' media folk) show up in Robert Lanham's pathetic book "The Hipster Handbook", an unfortunate guide for today's hipsters!

What happened to the poeticism and jaz-backed slang of hipster lingo? The jazz rhythm behind things like "axe" for your musical instument, or "beat" for beatific and hep, or "bistin' your conk" for havin' a good time? Do ya "collar all my jive?" - do ya get it? Cool as an intellectual term describing a far-thinker, also used for someone who maintains it through any and all storms! Now, cats 'n kittens, do ya got your boots on? Ya get it yet?

Well, either way, all y'all who do join this group be jake with me! Plant ya now and dig ya later, Gator!

T.paul
a.k.a.
SwankHipster
moderator ~ the IHC
http://tribes.tribe.net/internationalhipstercoalition?r=10448#

posted in Coltrane - 0 replies

Avant Jazz Webcast

Wed, 20 Jul 2005 04:40:01 GMT

Check out the Anderson Tapes, a weekly jazz webcast featuring the music of John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and many other luminaries of avant and free jazz.

WHEN: Wednesdays, 10-Midnite, EST (GMT -5.00)
WHERE: http://www.radiovolta.org
MY PAGE: http://www.radiovolta.org/dj/anderson.shtml

Please email any suggestions, comments and requests.

Kelvyn Anderson
kelvyn.anderson@gmail.com
Philadelphia PA

posted in Coltrane - 0 replies

never-released tapes discovered

acoustichrmny — Thu, 28 Apr 2005 16:50:40 GMT

http://jazztimes.com/columns_and_features/news/detail.cfm?article=10391
---
The Library of Congress (LOC) announced last Wednesday
the discovery of never-released tapes featuring
Thelonious Monk (pictured) and John Coltrane
performing at Carnegie Hall. The tapes, discovered
among other material to be digitized as part of the
Library’s continuing audio preservation program, are
from a 1957 performance recorded by the Voice of
America (VOA) for broadcast overseas, but which was
never heard in the United States. The concert tapes
also include performances that same evening by Ray
Charles, Sonny Rollins, the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra
and the Zoot Sims Quartet with Chet Baker.

Larry Appelbaum, the senior studio engineer/supervisor
of the Library’s Magnetic Recording Laboratory and the
LOC’s jazz specialist, discovered the tapes among the
Library’s nearly 50,000 VOA tapes that are being
systematically categorized and digitized.

“Among the tapes in a recent batch selected for
digitization were eight 10" open-reel tapes labeled
‘Carnegie Hall Jazz,’ with the date Nov. 29, 1957. The
back of one of the tape boxes included a note that
said T. Monk. When I played it, I recognized
Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane playing tenor
saxophone. The announcements by Willis Conover from
the stage that night confirmed the line-up,” Appelbaum
said.

Appelbaum described the tapes as “a kind of holy grail
for scholars and researchers” and said that several
Coltrane scholars had searched for the tapes for
years, but were never able to find them because they
were never properly categorized or preserved.

The tapes feature about 55 minutes of Monk, Coltrane
and the early and late show performances by all of the
groups that performed that evening. The Monk Quartet
with Coltrane played “Evidence,” “Monk’s Mood,”
“Crepescule with Nellie,” “Nutty,” “Epistrophy,”
“Bye-Ya, Sweet and Lovely” and “Blue Monk.”

“It's one of the things that makes my job so
interesting after all these years and why I love
working at the Library. It also reminds us why it's so
important to preserve these unique materials. This
music is too good to just sit on a shelf,” he said.

While the recordings are not currently available to
the general public, Appelbaum said he is optimistic
that a record label will eventually release the
performance.

The announcement was made as part of a press briefing
on Librarian of Congress James Billington’s
announcement of this year’s 50 sound recordings
selected for the National Recording Registry. Among
the recordings selected as being “culturally,
historically or aesthetically significant” are Coleman
Hawkins’ Body and Soul, Glenn Miller and His
Orchestra’s In the Mood and Dizzy Gillespie Big Band’s
Manteca. A full list can be found at the Library’s
website.

posted in Coltrane - 2 replies

Join the new MINGUS tribe...

Mon, 21 Mar 2005 21:22:53 GMT

http://charlesmingus.tribe.net/

posted in Coltrane - 0 replies

Art Blakey Tribe

psy-acoustic — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 13:32:05 GMT

join the art blakey tribe.

ArtBlakey.tribe.net

posted in Coltrane - 0 replies

Mos Def on a Love Supreme

gbru — Tue, 25 Nov 2003 00:35:17 GMT

WBJO radio ran a show on the making of "A Love Supreme' last year. You can play it over the internet on realplayer:

http://www.wbgo.org/alovesupreme/real/part1.ram
http://www.wbgo.org/alovesupreme/real/part2.ram

Good program

posted in Coltrane - 1 reply

Free MP3s and Indie Online Publishing

digitalgypsy — Sun, 17 Oct 2004 22:43:43 GMT

I just updated my blog with more links to hundreds of free MP3s and links to sites that will put indie music online (scroll down.)

Check it:
Stone's Stash
http://musicconnection.blogspot.com

posted in Coltrane - 0 replies

Elvin Jones @ Yoshi's last night

gbru — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 19:37:19 GMT

I caught the ten o'clock set. I don't really know what to think about it. Elvin, who is near 77, hasn't been doing well the past year. His drumming was really sporatic except during several swinging tunes where he just hung back in the pocket and let the other musicians shine. During a couple bass solos his comping was inconsistent and he didn't really display anything during his own solos. He really didn't do anything that dynamic.
The kind of amazing poly-rhythmic drumming that I heard the last couple years when he played here and that one can find on tunes like 'Out of This World' and 'Mr. Sims' was nowhere in last night's performance. Elvin seemed completely lost when he walked on stage. He stood up to talk to the crowd and all anyone heard was a bunch of gibberish. One of the band mates had to introduce the band members.
Later his wife (I think) came out and started talking to the crowd about Elvin's medical problems and how he spent a couple months hospitalized. she also said a doctor told her that Elvin wouldn't live more than a couple weeks. Elvin's wife said the Doctor told her that Elvin should not play the drums. She told the crowd that she responded 'Elvin has to play to the drums' she got big applause for that line. Elvin looked totally lost during her speech.
I stuck wondering whether it's a good thing that this guy is out playing in such a dimminished condition? On the one hand it's nice to see someone praticing his craft and life's work all the way to the end (& the end looks near for Elvin) on the other hand experiencing watching someone perform when he is so diminished. . .
Maybe someone else went to the show and had a different take.

posted in Coltrane - 2 replies

Atlantic or Impulse Sessions?

Tue, 25 Nov 2003 20:04:15 GMT

Curious to know how the Coltrane Tribe feels about John's Atlantic stuff versus the Impulse stuff?

Personally, I like John's later Atlantic and Early Impulse stuff. Although, I do get caught up in those later Impulse recordings (i.e. Meditations, Interstellar Space, Sunship etc.)

"Equinox" is probably my favorite cut from Coltrane's Atlantic sessions.

posted in Coltrane - 11 replies

listen to my cover of giant steps

astroid power-up — Fri, 26 Mar 2004 01:02:46 GMT

it's quite unique

http://cdbaby.com/cd/googleplex
go to "giant spiral"

the tune is in 60/4, with 60 notes to the octave. I love john coltrane, and "giant steps" changed my life.

scott bruzenak

posted in Coltrane - 0 replies

JOHN COLTRANE FESTIVAL

Dennis — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 21:49:35 GMT

From midnight, Thursday,March 11 thru Wednesday,March 24 there will be nothing but the music of John Coltrane at www.wkcr.org

posted in Coltrane - 0 replies

Eric Dolphy's Bass Clarinet

Mojave66 — Wed, 31 Dec 2003 04:55:33 GMT

I read somewhere (heaven knows where) that when Dolphy died, his bass clarinet was willed to Coltrane, who used it in a cut.

Anyone happen to know anything about this? I'd *love* to get my hands on it.

posted in Coltrane - 1 reply

Sonny Rollins June 18th in San Francisco

gbru — Tue, 13 Jan 2004 00:36:27 GMT

So Sonny's show is at Masonic Auditorium June 18th. Need I say more? He has got to be the greatest living jazz artist there is. With all the great musicians we've lost in the last three years, there is no doubt that I will be at this concert.

posted in Coltrane - 5 replies

San Francisco: Church of Saint Coltrane still open?

plastic-hero — Sat, 21 Feb 2004 17:57:04 GMT

In November '99 I visit SF and someone tipped be for the best sunday morning after party in SF: the church of Saint Coltrane. I never heard such a long version of a love supreme (about 2 1/2 hours), it was great! The band keeps in jamming for hours, super! I was wondering if this church is still open. Someone from SF gets some information?

cheers
Sander

posted in Coltrane - 5 replies

McCoy Tyner at Yoshi's January 27th to February 8th

gbru — Tue, 06 Jan 2004 19:03:38 GMT

** This post is blatantly pilfered from Dean**

http://www.yoshis.com
10th Annual McCoy Tyner Two Week Residency!
DISCOUNTED TICKETS TO TUE/WED 10PM SHOWS!

Week One: McCoy Tyner With Christian McBride & Jeff "Tain" Watts
Tuesday, January 27 - Sunday, February 1
Tue, Wed Shows at 8:00pm $24, 10:00pm Shows $20
Thu Shows at 8:00pm & 10:00pm $24
Fri, Sat Shows at 8:00pm & 10:00pm $28
Sun Show at 7:00pm $28, 9:00pm Show $22

Week Two: McCoy Tyner With Pharoah Sanders, Ravi Coltrane, Charnett Moffett, Eric Harland
Tuesday, February 3 - Sunday, February 8
Tue, Wed Shows at 8:00pm $26, 10:00pm Shows $22
Thu Shows at 8:00pm & 10:00pm $26
Fri, Sat Shows at 8:00pm & 10:00pm $30
Sun Show at 7:00pm $30, 9:00pm $24

Yoshi's is proud to present the 10th Annual McCoy Tyner Two-Week Residency! One of the greatest pianists in jazz history, McCoy Tyner, leads two different groups over two weeks assembled exclusively for Yoshi's by Artistic Director Peter Williams. Tyner is one of the most commanding and influential pianists of all time and most well-known for his work with the seminal John Coltrane Quartet of the 60s. Week One features McCoy in a trio setting with bassist Christian McBride and drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts. Week Two features a truly special line-up with saxophonists Pharoah Sanders and Ravi Coltrane, bassist Charnett Moffett and drummer Eric Harland.

**My own thoughts**

I had the pleasure of seeing the McCoy Tyner big band along with Elvin Jones at Masonic Auditorium in 2002. It was part of the San Francisco jazz festival. McCoy's band was astonishing, they were so tight, had amazing sound quality, and played a range of music from hard bop to songs in waltz time. When McCoy addressed the auditorium I thought I might be listening to the most eloquent man on earth. Elvin was great too. I'd recommend this show to everybody.

posted in Coltrane - 4 replies

Great Article on Ken Vandermark Saxophone Player http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0401/hull.php

Dean — Thu, 08 Jan 2004 07:53:43 GMT

Sax man puts money to work in more bands than you can count and more albums than that One, Two, Many Concepts by Tom Hull January 7 - 13, 2004 As prolific as he wants to be

The Vandermark 5
Airports for Light
Atavistic
Ken Vandermark
Furniture Music
Okka Disk

Asked how he could be so prolific, singer-painter-bandleader Jon Langford replied, "I'm brutally efficient and highly compartmentalized." Saxophonist Ken Vandermark could say the same. Like Langford, he moved to Chicago and catalyzed a music scene. Since the mid '90s he's juggled dozens of bands and released six to nine albums a year. Some of these are chance encounters: Get a set of musicians together, turn on the tape, and hope magic happens. But for Vandermark, purist improvisation is just one more concept. Take Free Fall, for instance.

Free Fall is Vandermark's clarinet-piano-bass trio, named after Jimmy Giuffre's famous 1963 album. But unlike Ken Vandermark's Joe Harriott Project (Straight Lines), this isn't a tribute band, just one that tries to create something new within the framework of Giuffre's lineup and language. Their debut, Furnace (Wobbly Rail), feels tentative. The first half (mostly Vandermark pieces) tests the band's parameters, while the second half (mostly pieces by bandmates Havard Wiik and Ingebrigt Haker Flaten) slouches into prettiness. But neither half sounds like Giuffre any more than, say, Mingus sounded like Ellington—most obviously, Vandermark's clarinet is dirty and musclebound, like his sax.

Free Fall is the second of Vandermark's album concept bands. The first was School Days, named after the Steve Lacy-Roswell Rudd Quartet album. Jeb Bishop plays Ruddish trombone, but Vandermark takes his cues from '60s saxophonists like Archie Shepp. As with Free Fall, the rhythm section is from Norway—Flaten on bass, and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums—and the band is fiercely responsive. Like Vandermark's, Nilssen-Love's jazz chops assume a rough-hewn physicality that derives as much from rock—a generational shift that crops up all over contemporary jazz. Nilssen-Love has cut several duo albums with saxophonists. The one with Vandermark, Dual Pleasure (Smalltown Supersound), is one of those improvised encounters where magic does happen—an intense, intimate, engaging clash of drums and reeds, each provoking the other.

Vandermark's concept bands evolve: Each distinct group opens up new opportunities, setting the initial concepts adrift. His trio with Hamid Drake (drums) and Nate McBride (bass, mostly electric) initially came together to record Spaceways Incorporated (2000), which interleaved Funkadelic grooves with Sun Ra spaciness. It was cool, but the follow-up, Version Soul, was groundbreaking: With all original material, it both expanded on the notion of funky free jazz and on the huge talents of the band. McBride's three tunes keyed off funk lines, while Vandermark's six followed his habit of dedicating pieces to touchstones—usually a musician, but sometimes an artist or a friend, anyone who inspires the germ of an idea—ranging here from ska keyboardist Jackie Mittoo and Sly bassist Larry Graham to the suave baritone sax of Serge Chaloff and the fiery tenor sax of Frank Wright.

Then there's Furniture Music, Vandermark's inevitable solo album. As far back as Anthony Braxton's For Alto, these things have usually been plug ugly, but Vandermark keeps this one fresh by switching horns (tenor and baritone sax, B-flat and bass clarinet), and keeping the intricately composed pieces short—this is not blow-first, think-later stuff. The Evan Parker dedication is shrill and warbly, the Lennie Tristano is neo-abstract bebop, the John Cage wanders, and the Jaap Blonk sounds like a foghorn on fire. A tough listen overall, but amazing.

But all of these are just side trips. Vandermark's flagship band since 1996, and the main showcase for his writing, has been the Vandermark 5. With two reed players, trombone, bass, and drums, Vandermark gets a big band sound out of a manageable group, much as Mingus did. And while he plays his parts, as with Ellington his real instrument is the band. Their latest album, Airports for Light, is the most complex and varied of the series, with standout pieces for Rahsaan Roland Kirk (which nails Kirk's tone and dynamism perfectly) and Curtis Mayfield (a noirish soundtrack that sets off the album's best solo), and a big-band finale whose connection to Sonny Rollins is less than obvious.

Vandermark's dedications say much about his relationship to tradition, which he mines assiduously for ideas, but his development of those ideas, and his own style of play, are unique. This may have something to do with how much history envelops us today. More likely, though, it's just that his father was a free jazz fanatic who turned his son on to the likes of Joe McPhee at an impressionable age. But the dedications also help organize his prodigious work ethic—expect another six to nine albums in the coming year. In 1999 Vandermark was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, in part (so he says) as an experiment to see what the money would make possible. If only all investments paid off so handsomely.

posted in Coltrane - 0 replies

Lots of coltrane at Borders

monalisasmile05 — Wed, 31 Dec 2003 03:23:34 GMT

While not one to push a particular establishment - I happened to be in Borders Bookstore this evening and noticed that they had about 9-11 different Coltrane CD's and had 3/5 copies of each - quite a bit for an artist that a few years ago you couldn't find. They had Love Supreme, Love Supreme Box set, Giant Steps, Coltrane for Lovers, and even a Ken Burns Jazz CD devoted entirely to Coltrane. This happened to the be the Borders in Winter Park, FL - but I'm sure lots of the stores are carrying more.

posted in Coltrane - 3 replies

Anthony Braxton in SF at Victoria Theater Dec 11 at 8 pm.

Dean — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 23:10:17 GMT

Anthony Braxton in SF at Victoria Theater Dec 11 at 8 pm.

http://www.plonsey.com/braxton1203.html

posted in Coltrane - 1 reply

learning to play sax tribe

gbru — Fri, 28 Nov 2003 16:41:57 GMT

Dean has set up a tribe called learning to play the saxophone. (public URL http://saxophoneplayer.tribe.com) The tribe would be a place to exchange ideas, talk about teaching techniques, revel in the joy that is (are) Etudes, etc

Coltrane's topics - tribe.net

Special radio show

For the Record....

RIP Alice

Coltrane Playing "Afro Blue"

Coltrane at 80 -- a talent supreme (From the San Francisco Chronicle)

Looking for an alt. celebration

A simple Thank you

Lincoln Zephyr Commercial

John Coltrane live, 1965, playing "Naima".

Favorites

Favorite version of "My Favorite Things"

Monk and Trane Live at Carnegie Hall

HOW SAD! The Coltrane Tribe FORGOT his birthday

How did the word "hipster" come to mean rich kids in clubs chasin' the latest trends?

Avant Jazz Webcast

never-released tapes discovered

Join the new MINGUS tribe...

Art Blakey Tribe

Mos Def on a Love Supreme

Free MP3s and Indie Online Publishing

Elvin Jones @ Yoshi's last night

Atlantic or Impulse Sessions?

listen to my cover of giant steps

JOHN COLTRANE FESTIVAL

Eric Dolphy's Bass Clarinet

Sonny Rollins June 18th in San Francisco

San Francisco: Church of Saint Coltrane still open?

McCoy Tyner at Yoshi's January 27th to February 8th

Great Article on Ken Vandermark Saxophone Player http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0401/hull.php

Lots of coltrane at Borders

Anthony Braxton in SF at Victoria Theater Dec 11 at 8 pm.

learning to play sax tribe

Another good URL for Coltrane sound