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| 3.906 Ft
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| 1. | Seven Steps to Heaven
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| 2. | Selim
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| 3. | Freddie Freeloader
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| 4. | The Road to Nefertiti (Nefertiti)
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| 5. | Tutu
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| 6. | Blue in Green
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| 7. | All Blues
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Jazz
Okyerema Asante - african drums, kalimba and percussion
Chief Bey - ashiko african drum
Hamiet Bluiett - baritone saxophone and contra alto clarinet
Jack DeJohnette - drums and piano
Oliver Lake - alto saxophone and flute
David Murray - bass clarinet and tenor saxophone
John Purcell - alto flute and saxello
Titos Sompa - african drums, kalimba, percussion and voice
The contradiction is so apparent it could pass for a Zen koan - how do you pay tribute to the man who changed the course of jazz five times and stay focused? How do you render homage to the jazz master whose most effective tools were silence, the short line, a barmen mute, the question mark hanging in the air? Because for all his prodigious talent, Miles Dewey Davis was above all a cipher, a shaman, and his bands were a channel, a conduit through which music from a higher place seemed to flow. His trumpet a juju stick, Davis orchestrated and directed the spontaneous creation of a new jazz in a succession of radically differing ensembles, each with roots in the jazz tradition and its head in the clouds of freedom and abstraction.
The possibilities run the gamut from sticking safely to the timeless melodies and changes of Miles milestones - like the Miles Davis All-Stars - to evoking a particular period, say early electric Miles - a la Joe Henderson - or tipping your hat obliquely to the man with the horn, as Keith Jarrett's Standards Trio does on Bye Bye Blackbird. Here, the distinguished World Saxophone Quartet, and Miles Davis alumnus Jack DeJohnette are up to something infinitely more ambitious - a comprehensive, intuitive exploration of what made Miles Miles, that elusive spirit, presence, and style that galvanized the world of jazz and often dictated its direction, from the melancholy introspection of 1959's Kind of Blue to the extreme violence of 1972's Live/Evil.
Like Miles, Oliver Lake, David Murray, Hamlet Bluiett, and John Purcell have radically explored conventional jazz structures over their collective 22 years as the WSQ - standards, blues, R&B, Ellingtonia - almost to the point of disintegration, yet always within an accessible framework, as if they were bursting to play free while still playing time. Also, like Miles' second classic quintet of the mid '60s, the WSQ are capable of generating intense, straight-ahead 4/4 swing while suggesting a spectrum of multiple rhythms and cross rhythms from within the basic tempo at hand. The addition of African percussion to their palette in the early '90s has only strengthened and deepened their rhythmic finesse.
So while they give the melancholy "Blue In Green" (one of the most beautiful things Miles ever recorded, and argued by some to be written with Bill Evans) a smoky, yearning rendition, nailing the exquisite balance of relaxation and tension Miles sustained throughout Kind of Blue, they turn the title cut of 1967's Nefertiti inside out on "The Road To Nefertiti." Pitched between bracing arrhythmia and spirited swing, "Nefertiti" adapts the original - where the horns played the simple songlike melody and the rhythm section shifted the context and weighed the possibilities - by passing the elliptical melody around from marimba to flute to African chant while the other horns spar playfully on top.
On "Selim," guest drummer Jack Dejohnette gets to revisit the exorcism on vinyl that was Live/Evil. Here, the emphasis is on the contrast between keening, floating brass chords soaring over a ground bass of ritualistic African percussion and passages of robust free interplay from the horns. And in the swaggering "Tutu" - truly Miles' last laugh at his naysayers - we see the whole arc of the jazz tradition telescoped into one great rollicking blast. Recalling the great spontaneous collective improvisation - rolling along like a fired-up New Orleans front-line - that characterized Miles' greatest ensembles, the baritone walks a funky line while searing barrelhouse solos are let loose over a deadly bed of polyrhythmic funk.
With the astonishing command Lake, Murray, Bluiett and Purcell have over the various instruments in their bag and the uncanny ESP they display making them sound tonally and texturally like each other, the music they play here conjures up the intangible, joyous communal spirit that is at the heart of the best jazz. The brilliant addition of African percussion takes their homage to Miles one step further, recalling the seminal early LPs of the great Art Ensemble of Chicago - themselves channelers of a great black art hundreds of year old. "Selim Sivad" is a new high point for the WSQ - as bold and brave as the music Miles was making circa 1965 - astonishing, telepathic group interplay, cutting edge, almost avant-garde stylings soaked in the blues, a few keening notes from a lonely trumpet, and plenty of gone.
---Andrew Jones, April 1998
• Andrew "Jr. Boy" Jones - Liner Notes
* Ian Terry - Engineer
* Jim West - Executive Producer, Photography
* Joe Ferla - Mixing
While there is a plethora of Miles Davis tribute albums out there, this one is interesting for the basic fact that this horn quartet attempts to evoke his spirit without the use of a trumpet. To add spice, they employ African drums, with kalimba and voice.
---Tim Sheridan, All Music Guide
World Saxophone Quartet
Active Decades: '70s, '80s, '90s and '00s
Born: 1977
Genre: Jazz
Styles: Modern Free, Post-Bop, Free Funk, Avant-Garde Jazz, African Jazz
Probably the first of several saxophone-only ensembles who proliferated in jazz after 1975, the WSQ is unquestionably the most commercially (and, arguably, the most creatively) successful. Of course, commercial success is a relative thing in jazz, especially when one is speaking of an avant-garde group. But unlike most free jazz artists, the WSQ managed to attract an audience of significant size; large enough to have garnered a major-label record deal in the '80s, an almost unheard-of occurrence in that retro-jazz decade. The band did it on merit, too, with only a hint of compromise (manifested mainly by albums of R&B and Duke Ellington covers). By the time their first record on Elektra/Musician came out in 1986, the band had evolved from their fire-breathing, free-improvising, ad-hoc beginnings into a smooth-playing, compositionally minded, well-rehearsed band. At their creative peak, the group melded jazz-based, harmonically adventurous improvisation with sophisticated composition. All of the group's original members (Julius Hemphill, alto; Oliver Lake, alto; David Murray, tenor; and Hamiet Bluiett, baritone) were estimable composers as well as improvisers. Each complimented the whole, making them even greater than the considerable sum of their parts. As a composer, Hemphill drew on European techniques (though his tunes were not without an unalloyed jazz component), while Bluiett was steeped in blues and funk. Lake and Murray fell somewhere in between. As soloists and writers, the early WSQ covered all the bases.
The WSQ were founded in 1976 after the four original members (all of them well-established solo artists) accepted an offer by Ed Jordan, the chairman of the music department at Southern University in New Orleans, to conduct a series of clinics and performances with and without a local rhythm section. The enthusiastic audience response to the unaccompanied saxophones convinced the musicians to develop the concept. They played a gig at the (now defunct) Tin Palace in New York, calling the group the Real New York Saxophone Quartet. They were later forced to change the name after reportedly being threatened with a lawsuit by the preexisting New York Saxophone Quartet; hence, the World Saxophone Quartet. In 1977, the band recorded their first album, an almost completely improvised effort called Point of No Return, for the Moers Music label. Later releases on Black Saint document the band's increasing interest in composition. The membership stayed constant until Hemphill's departure in 1989. Arthur Blythe was the first of Hemphill's several replacements. Blythe was with the band from 1990-1992, and from 1994-1995. James Spaulding joined briefly in 1993, and was quickly replaced by Eric Person. In 1996, after Blythe's second tenure, John Purcell took and held the chair.
Although they're a sax-oriented group, the WSQ's members have been multi-instrumentalists. The band always incorporated a wide variety of woodwinds into their sound. After Rhythm & Blues (1986, Elektra/Musician), the WSQ began using other musicians in their recordings and performances. Metamorphosis (1990, Elektra/Musician) added African drummers and electric bassist Melvin Gibbs. Later records utilized pianists, vocalists, bassists, and drummers. In adding other musicians, the band sacrificed part of their distinctiveness. The novelty of the band's original approach, and their ability to swing so hard sans rhythm, set them apart. By the end of the '90s, the WSQ had lost their major-label deal and much of their identity.
---Chris Kelsey, All Music Guide |
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