It may well be that John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme – Live in Seattle” album, which was released recently, will go down as a milestone in jazz history, even if the record works in a similar way to Ornette Coleman’s “Free Jazz”, Albert Ayler’s “Spiritual Unity” “or Peter Brötzmann’s” Machine Gun “. All of them albums that have radically changed the course of music history, without too many people having heard these records at all, let alone heard them in full. With Coltrane’s Seattle album, however, you will witness a storm whose foothills and breakers can still be felt today not only in jazz, but also in rock music. Good opportunity to listen to a few new releases again.
Coltrane’s late phase not only made the liberation from the rules of the well-tempered music of Europe possible. It also opened the door for musicians of any instrument to find their own voice. The saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, for example, draws his strength deeply from gospel music. This is a direct line from Coltrane to Albert Ayler, which in turn leads directly to the “Seattle” album, because you can clearly hear what Coltrane’s biographers have already written. That he was working intensively with Ayler back in the winter of 1965. On James Brandon Lewis’ new album “Code of Being” (Intakt Records) this gives the impetuous power of his tenor saxophone support and direction. With almost all the pieces, it starts from a lyrical concept of beauty into ecstasy, in which the four musicians break up the melodious sound of the classical jazz quartet and then find their way back to calm. Because all the rules that need to be broken have already been broken, for Lewis this is not so much an outbreak as a departure. He wrote “Hope you dig it” to a friend to whom he sent the album. But yes. One of the best albums this year.
Heard in Germany Johannes Schleiermacher among the strongest voices on the tenor saxophone. From the big band, through long-term tours with the improvisation titan Gunter Hampel, extensive trips through Africa and appearances with Tony Allen, he has internalized pretty much all facets of jazz in his biography. Years ago he found his ideal sparring partner in the drummer Max Andrzejewski. With her duo training During the Lockdowns, the two found ways to integrate all possible forms into their improvisations, be it “found objects” sounds, electronic loops or transatlantic recordings of the Deerhoof-Guitarist John Dieterich. What began as a commission from the Berlin Jazz Festival will be published at the end of November as Training & John on the album “Three Seconds” (Fun in the Church). This is free music in the best sense of the word, a sound and music collage that every second sounds like that wild Berlin that fascinates Americans like Dieterich so much.
The interface between free musicians and rock is a criminally underexposed niche anyway. The new band of the incredibly productive bassist William Parker is exploring them. After the publication of his 10-CD total work of art “Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World” with its arc through music almost all over the world, the album “Mayan Space Station” (Aum Fidelity) with guitarist Ava Mendoza and the Drummer Gerald Cleaver an unusually compact dive into improvised rock, in which the guitar glides around on the distortions like in the hollow of a skate park, while Parker and Cleaver, with all their freedom, ram rhythm pegs that anchor the album deep in the almost forgotten free funk.
Thurston Moore goes one step further, although solo he was very good at his rock star days Sonic Youth can build on, but what he can do with the free jazz rock band construct from Istanbul pulls out of his instrument on the album “Turkish Belly” (Karlrecords), is pure, raw pleasure in the absolute liberation from song and other structures. The guitarist’s credo of “shredding” takes on a whole new, very literal meaning. Konstrukt are on the road long enough not to be intimidated. On the contrary. In all of its impetuous nature, the album is a wonderful bridge.
Certainly one should not underestimate John Coltrane’s effect in those currents of modern jazz with a little more clarity and form. When you listen, it certainly touches you much more directly. For example, a new edition of Winston Mankunku Ngozi’s legendary album “Yakhal’Inkomo” (Mr. Bongo) will be released soon. What the South African saxophonist recorded with his quartet in Johannesburg in the summer of 1968 may formally be a classic modern jazz album. But the emotionality that is expressed in the slightly delayed beats and lines makes this album in the wake of Coltrane’s middle years an album that is a little closer to you than much of that time anyway.