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I have been a little busy for the last couple of weeks but I will come back shortly with some cool records I picked on Record Store Day...

Take care!

Another Great Jazz Adventurer Gone, Farewell Mr. Taylor...

A true jazz pioneer, a free improviser, an atonal composer and a pitchless keyboard banger passed away during the week leaving many discussions behind. The jazz world lost Cecil Taylor at the age of 89.

He was maybe one of the most discussed and argued over jazz pianists of all time.

Cecil TAYLOR:

Born in Queens, New York in 1929 he was encouraged to play music by his mother at an early age. He began to take piano lessons when he was six, studied percussion with his uncle who was a performing professional artist. He is probably one of the first jazz musicians who had undergone a formal music training in jazz, composition and arranging at the New England Conservatory. During these years he was very much involved in classical music, especially with the works of Bartok and Stockhausen which we can definitely see the influences in his later career.

Cecil Taylor is known as one of the main musicians to create the free jazz scene along with Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler. We can even argue that he is the leading figure of the modern jazz. His playing was so different that he did not play with a swing feel at all and his primary focus was to try to create jazz textures rather than jazz phrases. His percussive technique on the piano is quite unique to him. His compositions are complex and surrounded by a vast level of energy. His approach to jazz music is significantly different than other artists and even other styles. When we listen to him  we can find many similarities to 20th century classical music like the works of Ives and Stockhausen (you can listen to the Max Roach & Cecil Taylor's Historic Concerts album for this).
His unmelodic improvisation style, his fast stylistic changes and virtuosic technique is like no other jazz player. Here is a good proof for those traits.

"Excursion on a Wobbly Rail" by the Cecil Taylor Quartet

Now let's take a  look at his main discography. He recorded his first album "Jazz Advance" in 1956 followed by the "At Newport" album in 1957. The third one "Looking Ahead!" that came out in 1959 was probably the beginning for Cecil Taylor to show his true genius. 

Most of the jazz critics agree upon (it is rare for critics to agree upon something when it comes to Cecil Taylor) that his two masterpieces are "Unit Structures" and "Conquistador!", both from the Blue Note label in 1966. 

"Enter Evening"

A difficult and dissonant album, much further from its era. As you can imagine, just like all music ahead of its time, this album was not commercially successful for Taylor. However it is today well appreciated.

The second greatest work of Cecil Taylor is the "Conquistador!" album. It was more successful musically than the "Unit Structures". 

Both these albums are recorded without a single notation that Taylor had given up in the early 60s right after Charles Mingus.

"Conquistador"

At the same time, Taylor was also a poet. He often integrated his poems into his musical performances, and they frequently appear in the liner notes of his albums. The CD Chinampas, released in 1987, is a recording of Taylor reciting several of his poems, accompanying himself on percussion.

He will always be remembered as a musician constantly pushing his own and his audience's limits in many unexpected ways.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Taylor!

The Great Coltrane

In my "Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary" review post I had mentioned that I was going to write about Coltrane himself and believe me I have been thinking about it since then.

I had a vast amount of ideas how to structure what I could write about him but whenever I sat down to put the words together, lots of other things came to my mind about him and I felt that I was still not ready to do it in a proper way. But as Julius Caesar said it rightfully, "Cowards die many times before their deaths"... So here comes my post on one of the greatest, well maybe the greatest according to many, jazz musician of all time.

John COLTRANE:

The first thing comes to my mind about Coltrane that in his short life (he passed away when he was 40), he lived the lives of many. Not only musically but personally and artistically as well. After all is there any other jazz musician that has been made patron saint of a church? If you ever visit San Francisco you can pay a tribute to him by visiting the Saint John William Coltrane African Orthodox Church (http://www.coltranechurch.org/)

As you might have noticed by now, I do not like to write biographical posts due to the fact that there are many other sources to get much better information on an artist's life. Therefore just like my other posts this one may also come discursive to you but bear with me as I will try to recap and induce along the way as much as possible, just like Coltrane...

His contributions to the jazz world, impacting many musicians until the present time, his innovations on improvisation and his novel approaches mainly to the concept of jazz and also to saxophone playing are colossal when compared to his short career and even shorter recording period of just 12 years. In this short span of time, he could cram in many albums both as a leader or a side man but most importantly practicing the real prominent jazz styles such as bebop, hard bop, modal jazz and free jazz.

Coltrane, born in 1926, started his musical life with clarinet and then switched to alto saxophone. He was a big fan of Charlie Parker and during his military service in Hawaii, he tried hard to imitate him. One remark here is that he enlisted in the army on the day the US dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima; this event would be an important event for Coltrane's life and we will discuss about it.

"Koko" by John Coltrane, recorded during his army days in Hawaii

Right after his military service, he began touring with the band King Kolax and during this period he started to develop a vocabulary of high register squeals and low squawks both of which would be his important assets in his own music, especially during his free jazz period.

In 1948 he bought his first tenor saxophone and made it his permanent instrument. During later years he would also add soprano sax and flute but tenor sax was the instrument he built his reputation with.

Until he joined the Miles Davis band in 1955 he had the opportunity to tour with Dizzy Gillespie working heavily to develop his bebop playing.
According to jazz historians, it was a bold decision that Miles Davis had hired John Coltrane to his band. Their playing formats and approaches were significantly different. Miles Davis was at the height of his career with a laid back style and a darker tone. On the contrary, Coltrane had an authentic bright, steely and almost no vibrato sax tone which would become the norm later for many bebop sax players. His solos were rather aggressive, long, busy and complex compared to Miles Davis. There is a famous anecdote of the odd couple where Miles Davis criticizes and questions Coltrane on his never ending solos and Coltrane tries to rationalize his playing and answering that he does not know how to stop. Miles Davis immediately replies back: "Just take the fuckin' horn out of your mouth"... 

Coltrane worked with Miles Davis until he fired him in 1957 because of Coltrane's heroin addiction. The main album from this period is "Round About Midnight".

"Round Midnight" by Miles Davis Quintet incl. John Coltrane

Being fired from the quintet was a wake-up call for John Coltrane. He had found himself at the crossroads, he was either going to go to the very bottom or he was going to quit drugs. He eventually quit cold turkey, locking himself in his Philadelphia home as he battled withdrawal. Following this tough period, as told in the Trane documentary, when he cleaned up, things became much clearer for him. It was like he was enlightened. 

He joined Thelonious Monk's Quartet for a short time in 1957, where he always credited Monk for both teaching him his new musical ideas and giving him the space to make new discoveries. There is not too many recordings from those days but here is a live piece from the Carnegie Hall concert.

"Epistropohy" by Monk Quartet feat. Coltrane

This was most probably the recording Coltrane invented his authentic playing technique of running arpeggios at an incredible speed throughout the whole range of his saxophone (he was playing hundreds of sixteenth notes a minute). The famous Downbeat jazz critic Ira Gitler would call this technique as the "sheets of sound".

In 1959, Coltrane rejoined the Miles Davis' band which was now a sextet. He made two key recordings during this time. First one, "Kind of Blue" with Miles Davis, and the second one, "Giant Steps", a breakthrough album for Coltrane as a leader.

"Kind of Blue", acclaimed by many, as the greatest jazz recording ever, was a masterpiece of Miles Davis. The modal jazz offered a new direction that Coltrane would pursue during the coming years of his career.

"So What" by Miles Davis incl. John Coltrane

On the other hand, "Giant Steps" was Coltrane's pinnacle and final word on the harmonic complexity of bebop.  Harmonically it was an amazing technique by John Coltrane which was named after him as the "Coltrane changes". Basically they are variations of harmonic chord progressions by using alternative chords over common jazz chord progressions. Listen below how he plays the title track with a superhuman tempo and chord progression. It is said that Coltrane had composed this very piece for practicing purposes...

"Giant Steps" by John Coltrane

Another important thing about this album is a creation of a different compositional technique by Coltrane. In the piece "Naima" we can listen to a single note called the "pedal point", repeating continuously like a drone underneath the melody. The technique creates a suspense for the listener and an expectation of a chordal change.

"Naima" by John Coltrane

Coltrane left the Miles Davis band in 1960 in order to form his own quartet. It took some time to fully settle the group. His desire was to create such a band that could reflect his energy and interest in modal jazz but at the same time giving him the freedom to explore new solos. The members of the new "Classic Quartet" were McCoy Tyner on piano, Elvin Jones (I believe the best jazz drummer of all time) on drums and  Jimmy Garrison on bass provided much more he was looking for.

In my opinion, this quartet was one of the most important and influential groups in jazz history.

With each new recording with the classic quartet, Coltrane intensified his music. His interest in Eastern cultures after quitting his drug abuse, carried him to a higher spiritual level. He began to experiment with the soprano saxophone for its clear and nasal timbre that starts where the tenor sax leaves off. He made the album "My Favorite Things" in 1960 and the title track became a hit.

"My Favorite Things" by John Coltrane (listen to Eastern influences)

Most probably the major work of the classic quartet is the "A Love Supreme" recorded in 1964. It is the masterpiece of Coltrane where he combines his musical genius with his spiritual side. However there are differentiated opinions about the album, one for example from Miles Davis, calling it "an album for people loving peace, like hippies and all"... It is also an important album in my opinion where Coltrane began to test the avant-garde sounds.

Part 1: "Acknowledgement" by John Coltrane Quartet from the album "A Love Supreme"

Pretty soon, he was going to let go the modal context  to a degree that tonality and meter did not matter anymore. A fine example from this free jazz period is his "Ascension" album which he recorded with a more crowded band. It was an album that Coltrane experimented with multiphonics (production of more than one note at a time through fingering and blowing techniques, extremely difficult I must say)...During the recording, he did not give the band members any direction for their solos and the whole band was free to improvise during their solos. And it was an album where the main concentration was on these solos.

The new Coltrane sound was quite new to his fans around the world but his interest in free jazz was not so new. He had worked with Cecil Taylor and Don Cherry much before he recorded "Ascension". In order to intensify the new sound he decided to extend the band. He hired Eric Dolphy, Pharaoh Sanders and Rashied Ali. These new recruitments resulted with the departure of McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones. He replaced Tyner with his wife Alice Coltrane on the piano.

As you can see and hear, John Coltrane had many different styles both as a player and a composer since the day he went into the studio with Miles Davis in 1955 until his death in 1967.
One can never hear a sloppy note coming out his instrument. He was always hard working, serious and intense. He played with remarkable speed and agility. I am not sure, but he can be the most copied jazz figure in the jazz history and not only by sax players but for other instrumentalists as well. You can even find all the scores of all his solos.

I guess it would not be fair to complete the post without mentioning his spiritual side.  Even though he was coming from a practicing Christian family (his both grandfathers were reverends) he was not a fully religious personality in the sense of Christianity until the late 1950s. He tried to practice religion through his music and playing. However after he quit his drug and alcohol abuse in 1957 he became a true spiritual man turning his face to Eastern cultures. As he stated in the liner notes of his "A Love Supreme" album, "I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music".
He was never in favor of one specific religion and he had adopted a more universal approach for his spirituality. He was truly interested in Mysticism, Hinduism, Sufism, the Kabbalah, Krishnamurti, African history, and the philosophical teachings of Plato and Aristotle.  Coltrane also became interested in Zen Buddhism and, later in his career, visited Buddhist temples during his 1966 tour of Japan. The Japan tour, the year before he passed away is an important one as he was really interested in the Japanese philosophy and culture. Even though there were significant problems with the turnout, he extended the tour to smaller cities as well, like Nagasaki, where he paid his tribute to the victims of the second atomic bomb.

Liner notes from the album "A Love Supreme"

One can easily argue that he was one of the most serious musical thinkers of the jazz scene in the 50s and 60s. Even today there are many sax players whose playing is heavily indebted to him. His commitment to his craft, excelling in all the styles he had practiced, his ideas, his innovations and especially his courage is remarkable.
You might say that his music was not always easy to grasp or appreciate. He had unpleasant sounds, yes, but he always tried to reflect the situation of this world to the people of this world. No doubt about that he always played from his heart and that heart was a mirror for the listeners to witness both the beauty and the ugliness of our world.
Almost after 50 years after his death, we can still learn from him...