Compassion: The Music of John Coltrane commemorates the 50th Anniversary of the jazz legend's passing on July 17, 1967 and features Dave Liebman and Joe Lovano interpreting the music of the great master.
The first joyous notes of Locomotion - a buoyant wave of blissed-out fun - hit your ears and you know there are going to be some fine things here from five seasoned Trane scholars. The six minutes 11 seconds of Locomotion seem to pass in no time - the tune first made an appearance on the Blue Train album, Coltrane’s only Blue Note recording, in 1958.
Then with no fuss at all we are into the delightfully flitting Central Park West. Liebman (tenor/soprano saxes, wooden recorder, C flute on the record) and Lovano (tenor sax, aulochrome, alto clarinet, Scottish flute) circle like butterflies around the flower of the tune.
The tune is paired with a dreamy, laid-back reading of Dear Lord with Phil Markowitz’s delicate piano runs, and Billy Hart’s drums. Also among the illustrious personnel on this adventurous;ly varied album is another veteran Coltrane acolyte, bassist Ron McClure.
The attractive package includes a 24-page booklet of photos, with essays and enthusiastic contributions from all the musicians participating. The album was recorded on June 22, 2007 - almost forty years to the day after John Coltrane’s death - at Clinton Recording Studios in NYC for BBC Radio 3’s Jazz on 3. Six distinctive phases of the Trane legacy were identified and the seven tracks tend to explore different sonic landscapes from the life.
Reverend King - `a completely diatonic study in free time’ - is led by Lovano’s meditative flute and has a pastoral, improvised air. Fashioned around a core blues riff, Equinox gains lift off and soars away into the luminous blue yonder.
Since 1999, Liebman and Lovano, Markowitz and Hart have been playing the music of Coltrane(1926-1967) with their Saxophone Summit ensemble. "We’re just all unbelievable Coltrane fans," Hart says in the liner notes and the legendary drummer estimates that the quintet members’ combined devotion to Trane’s music amounts to over 200 years.
Anyway, last word to Billy Hart again: "I just think the world is a better place when you hear Coltrane’s music."
Paddy Kehoe
