John Coltrane Quartet Coltrane (1962) [2016_acousticsounds 24 192]

The John Coltrane Quartet - Africa/Brass (1961) {Impulse!-Verve Originals 0602517486225 rel 2007}
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© 1961, 2007 Impulse! / Verve / UMG | Verve Originals Series | 0602517486225 | AS-6
Jazz / Hard Bop / Experimental Big Band / Post Bop / Modal Music / Saxophone

The album newly remastered from the original master tapes. John Coltrane assembles a 20-piece band for these three songs. There's McCoy Tyner, Reggie Workman, Elvin Jones, and 16 others. It's heavy on brass, per the title, there are five french horns, for example. There are notable players like Eric Dolphy, Booker Little, Freddie Hubbard, and Julian Priester in the band, but the solos are by Coltrane, Tyner, or Jones. The orchestration was done by Coltrane, Tyner, and Dolphy. The liner notes say Dolphy did a lot of it, later it came out Tyner did more (though Dolphy was no longer around to argue the point). It's not really a big band in the Duke Ellington style, but with all of the horns, it's certainly a big band.

It is a well rehearsed story that some of the major innovators of modern jazz were, in the early 1960s, struggling to get recording contracts or gigs in America. This led players like Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor to try their hand across the Atlantic. These players found a particularly warm reception in Scandinavia, and live recordings from any of these in Sweden or Denmark are well worth looking out for. This nicely packaged reissue captures Taylor’s performances at Copenhagen’s Café Montmartre, with three bonus tracks recorded at Stockholm’s Golden Circle. For fans of Taylor, the material (with the exception of the bonus tracks which have not been previously released) will be familiar from the Live! At the Café Montmartre and Nefertiti: the beautiful one has come. This set comes with a booklet with the sleeve notes from these previous releases, featuring Erik Weidermann’s insightful comments on the performances and the developments of Taylor’s playing.

John Coltrane's Crescent from the spring of 1964 is an epic album, showing his meditative side that would serve as a perfect prelude to his immortal work A Love Supreme. His finest quartet with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones supports the somewhat softer side of Coltrane, and while not completely in ballad style, the focus and accessible tone of this recording work wonders for anyone willing to sit back and let this music enrich and wash over you. While not quite at the "sheets of sound" unfettered music he would make before his passing in 1967, there are hints of this group stretching out in restrained dynamics, playing as lovely a progressive jazz as heard anywhere in any time period. The highlights come at the top with the reverent, ruminating, and free ballad "Crescent," with a patient Coltrane acquiescing to swinging…

John Coltrane frequently appeared on live radio broadcasts of concerts while touring with his bands, with many of them appearing and reappearing on various European labels. This 1963 Copenhagen concert, recorded at Tivoli Konertasal, features his classic quartet with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones. Previously issued by TDJ and MagLuxe, this two-CD set contains the complete concert, except for "Impressions," which was evidently incomplete on the original source tape. As typical with live recordings made from broadcasts with no remixing, the sound is not to the standard of a professional recording, with somewhat distant bass and muddy audio in spots. But the music is very listenable and finds the quartet at a peak, particularly in Coltrane's features on soprano sax, which include "The Promise," "Afro-Blue," and an explosive "My Favorite Things"…

Andrew Cyrille Quartet - The Declaration of Musical Independence (2016) {ECM 2430}
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© 2016 ECM Records | ECM 2430
Jazz / Modern Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz

The great avant-jazz drummer Andrew Cyrille – whose associations have ranged from a long collaboration with Cecil Taylor to co-leading the collective Trio 3 with Oliver Lake and Reggie Workman – makes his ECM leader debut with The Declaration of Musical Independence. Featuring a quartet with guitarist Bill Frisell, keyboardist Richard Teitelbaum and bassist Ben Street, the album kicks off with an artfully oblique interpretation of John Coltrane’s “Coltrane Time,” led by Cyrille’s solo drum intro.

Throughout John Coltrane's discography there are a handful of decisive and controversial albums that split his listening camp into factions. Generally, these occur in his later-period works such as Om and Ascension, which push into some pretty heady blowing. As a contrast, Ballads is often criticized as too easy and as too much of a compromise between Coltrane and Impulse! (the two had just entered into the first year of label representation). Seen as an answer to critics who found his work complicated with too many notes and too thin a concept, Ballads has even been accused of being a record that Coltrane didn't want to make. These conspiracy theories (and there are more) really just get in the way of enjoying a perfectly fine album of Coltrane doing what he always did - exploring new avenues and modes in an inexhaustible search for personal and artistic enlightenment…

The seminal quartet recordings compiled on this collection were made during a transitional period in John Coltrane's musical career. He had first joined the Miles Davis Quintet in 1955 and would form his own celebrated quartet with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones in 1960. In the intervening years, he overcame his narcotics addiction and began to expand on his own musical ideas while experimenting with both the Thelonious Monk Quartet and the Miles Davis Sextet (featuring Bill Evans and Cannonball Adderley). Although Trane belonged to both the Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk groups, he also recorded studio sessions with other musicians and presented his own albums during this period. Among them were many quartet sides, all of them featuring Red Garland on piano and Paul Chambers on bass (both of whom he had known from the Miles Davis Quintet).

John Coltrane - Standard Coltrane (1958) {Prestige RVG 0888072312210 rel 2009}
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© 1958, 2009 Concord / Prestige | 0888072312210 | Prestige RVG Remasters Series | 24-bit remaster | P-7243
Jazz / Hard Bop / Bop / Saxophone

I was the engineer on the recording sessions and I also made the masters for the original LP issues of these albums. Since the advent of the CD, other people have been making the masters. Mastering is the final step in the process of creating the sound of the finished product. Now, thanks to the folks at the Concord Music Group who have given me the opportunity to remaster these albums, I can present my versions of the music on CD using modern technology. I remember the sessions well, I remember how the musicians wanted to sound, and I remember their reactions to the playbacks. Today, I feel strongly that I am their messenger. — Rudy Van Gelder