Dave Liebman

Jean-Marie Machado, Dave Liebman - Media Luz (2014) {La Buissonne}
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© 2014 La Buissonne / Deutsche Grammophon | RJAL397020
Jazz / Classical / Chamber Jazz

Jean-Marie Machado and Dave Liebman play together since 2003. Of this complicity were born two albums: Caminando (on 2008 - Pao Records) and Eternal Moments (on 2010 - Bee Jazz). In 2011, Jean-Marie Machado suggests to Dave Liebman inviting the German bugliste Claus Stötter and the string quartet Psophos; of this meeting was born the Media Luz project. An exceptional musical moment for a dialogue between a magnificent European composer and a great American soloist who draws us a jazzchamber mood.

NEA Jazz Master Dave Liebman has always declared that if he had to name one primary influence and inspiration, it would be John Coltrane. The first time he saw Coltrane at Birdland in February 1962, he was 15 years old. As he recounts in his autobiography, What It Is (as told to yours truly), that was the night he saw the light, though he didn’t realize it for years. “Once you see the light,” he explains, “you can never turn away from it, though you may try. I went to see Coltrane from then on, anytime I could.”

Influential French label Owl was set up in 1976 by photographer Jean-Jacques Pussiau, but it concentrated less on homegrown talent (though it showcased the late Michel Petrucianni) than on reviving overlooked talents and helping celebrated ones find new or rekindled intimacies. Of a current batch of Owl reissues, this 1987 recording led by sometime Miles Davis saxophonist Dave Liebman checks 10 John Coltrane compositions, half with an acoustic band, half with a Miles/Weather Report-like fusion one. Liebman can be as fast-moving and harmonically advanced as the late Michael Brecker, but has his own subtly nuanced tone, skewed intervals (Indian music has been a big influence) and timing. He's tender on an atmospheric Crescent (with Eddie Gomez's bass), After The Rain, and on a yearning Dear Lord (with Jim Beard's strings-like synths), and turns Dahomey Dance into a scything soprano-sax and funk blues. It's wonderful sax, and since Liebman isn't a Coltrane clone, it's also different from the usual tributes - even if the second half shows its age a little.