Jack DeJohnette, Ravi Coltrane and Matt Garrison -- University of Texas, Austin

I do not remember ever seeing Jack DeJohnette live before but he might have been at a Woodstock Creative Music Ensemble that Karl Berger and Pat Metheny organized many years ago.

That said, I was expecting "Coltrane" to be in the house mainly because John Coltrane's and Jimmy Garrison's sons were playing with Jack D. I did not know that DeJohnette had planned with Rashid Ali and Coltrane in 1966 during the very avant garde end of JC's career. Jack was 24 and that must to have been quite a trip for him.

Supposedly, this ensemble had been assembled by DeJohnette before; about twenty years ago. It will be 50 years this year that JC passed into a higher realm. If anyone achieved the acquisition of a "soul" I would have to be John Coltrane. His music is so spiritual that I hear it even in other like minded musicians' music. Hence, the term I coined -- "Coltrane is in the house tonight."

I was exposed to Coltrane by my former friend, Michael Pollack back at Yale in 1978, about 11 years after JC's death. Pollack aka Boa aka Bobo turned me on to both Miles and Coltrane in a big way and I was hooked after that initial exposure.

The set that DeJohnette-Coltrane-Garrison played included a free improvisation called Atmosphere, a rocking song called The Two Jimmys (after Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Garrison) and a few standards that I forgot the names of as well as a few other improvisations.  I was especially impressed with Matt Garrison's bass playing that included a lot of sounds being generated from a computer/pedal system he had (Matt was born in 1970 so he is the youngest of the group). Garrison also runs a club/AV place in Brooklyn called Shapeshifter that I have been to several times.

Ravi played alto, soprano and sopranino saxes and was lyrical and could stretch out further than I thought possible for him (I have never seen him live until this evening).

They played an hour and a half and then did a lovely encore after some discussion about whether Ravi remembered the song; he did just fine.

And it was fine, fine, fine...

Jaga Jazzist - "Toccata" - Live at Le Poisson Rouge, NYC 2011

Janis: Little Girl Blue

Highly recommended biopic about Janis Joplin. Through the years, I have come to appreciate Janis, especially from my ex-wife, Ellie and stepdaughter, Cassie.

It is amazing how I know all of her songs as they unfold in the movie and I knew that her life was quite troubled but the true pain is revealed in the flick.

Seeing all the faces of her band members, friends and relatives it appears evident that Janis just could not ever grow old; her work had to be that of a young person and probably would not have translated well into middle and old age.

Like Amy Winehouse, the lack of real love or perhaps the need for a love that just does not exist in our corporeal world, in the end, was the downfall for both Janis and Amy.

R.I.P. oh great women singers...

Kew Rhone

Flying home from Cartagena I had my iPod and decided to play one of my favorite albums of all time. Recorded about 40 years ago, it is called Kew Rhone. This is a truly avant garde jazz-classical work. To me, it is a desert island choice for the top 25 albums I would listen to over and over again. Back in the late 1980's and early 1990's I wrote two quasi-classical pieces that I called "Jazz Symphonies." I entitled them the New York Jazz Symphony (1987) and the California-Oregon Jazz Symphony (1991). These were feeble attempts at what is the ultimate Jazz Symphony, Kew Rhone.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfnSkp4DObyaP12v2d5fPBrY28FVaUcrv

Best damn female guitar players I have ever seen! INCREDIBLE !

Miles Davis/John Coltrane - Konserthuset Stockholm (1960 FULL CONCERT)

For all Jazz Lovers -- this is RARE!

John Coltrane's A Love Supreme

Last night I saw at Lincoln Center -- Alice Tully Hall the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra led by Wynton Marsalis perform a big band version of John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, that is possibly his most famous work after My Favorite Things.

The first half of the concert actually started with My Favorite Things, a somewhat truncated version of older versions I have heard but it was not a bad arrangement, just somewhat different.  The big band setting for Coltrane's music reminds me more of Duke Ellington's or Charles Mingus' big band ensembles.

The next piece was an adaptation from African Brass, featuring two basses.

The second half was devoted to a Love Supreme, with all four parts:

1) Acknowledgement
2) Resolution
3) Pursuance
4) Psalm (ending with Prayer)

This piece is the bridge between Coltrane's more melodic pieces during the Quartet days from 1959 until A Love Supreme at the end of 1964.  After this, Coltrane's becomes far more abstract not unlike an artist like Jackson Pollock whose work became increasingly abstract towards the end of his relatively short life.

Similarly, Coltrane fought heroin addiction and became deeply religious (embracing many forms of spiritual practice) and succumbed to liver cancer in 1967 at the age of 40. Here is an excellent biography about Coltrane's life: http://www.monsoon-music.com/Looking_East.html

The end period of his music is difficult to listen to but is worth trying especially if one wishes to embrace the higher.  Coltrane said his composing was like cathedrals of sound.

Suffice it to say, that John Coltrane was "in the house" last night; his spirit is indomitable.

On another note, I was driving by my old block at 77th Street between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive; it has been renamed Miles Davis Way in honor of Miles' residence on that block that I shared with him for a few years back in 1981-1982.