Birdland, NYC Jan 19-23, 2010
When last (& first) they met, it was billed “The Grand Collaboration.” The production was the brainchild of the great Max Roach, one of the most formidable musicians to emerge in the 40’s with music media named “Bebop.” He is one of the original Boperators of that innovative upsurge of American Classical musical rejuvenation – the soul of which was carried by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, JJ Johnson, Kenney Clarke, Charlie Mingus to begin a list.
In 1970 Max had put together a startlingly innovative percussion ensemble called M’Boom with marimbas, xylophones, timpani, vibraphones, gongs, timbales, chimes, bongos, steel drums, glockenspiels and the drum kit. At times its personnel reached ten players. Not limited to what people think the role of Percussion instruments, viz., rhythm, the group also emphasized and focused on harmony and even melody, moving from one genre of music to the other seamlessly, with sticks, mallets, hands, to make a truly thrilling musical presentation. Certainly M’Boom was one of the most inventive groups anyone had heard. The personnel on this original appearance was Fred King, Joe Chambers, Warren Smith, Freddie Waits, Roy Brooks, Omar Clay, Ray Mantilla, Francisco Mora, and Eli Fountain. And though the personnel varied through the years, today Joe Chambers, Warren Smith, Ray Mantilla and Eli Fountain remain. Steve Berrios has been a delightful addition.
David Murray arrived in New York from California in 1975 and began to effloresce in the mix of the then transitioning New York music scene. Trane had left 1967, Ayler in 1970, so that when David arrived and as I said in an essay in my book Digging) “Some years ago I wrote, ‘Albert Ayler is the dynamite sound of our time.’ Now I think, that can be said about David Murray.” And so a few ticks after re-establishing his base in the city, and meeting some of the wonderful young musicians who were also blossoming, by 1976 David pulled together the original World Saxophone Quartet. They were Murray, Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake, Hamiett Bluiett.
Hemphill died in 1995 and a stream of fine saxophonists have sat in that chair, Arthur Blythe, Eric Person, James Spaulding, John Purcell, Bruce Williams, Jaleel Shaw, Jorge Sylvester, Steve Potts, Tony Kofi, James Carter and occasionally they have added other instruments. It is James Carter that stepped into that spot in their most recent gig at Birdland. What the WSQ has done since their inception was fashion a newer and more engaging face for the so called “avant garde.” In taking four of the most daring and innovative saxophonists from a new emerging avant, i.e. emerging after Trane, Pharoah, Dolphy, Ornette, Albert, and utilizing a welding unison baked harmony as their identifying brand sound, it raised the level of what individual players styling themselves “out” had to do to at least qualify themselves as digging musical innovation “at the top of their time” (Richard Wright’s dictum). The Sax Quartet by its very approach to a new music seemed to structurally dismiss mere anarchy, as some would-be Newists insist is all that makes a music not just ”new” but “newer.”
The recent gig at Birdland (Jan 19-23 2010) brought us back to Max Roach’s historic call and 1981 production of “The Grand Encounter” which brought together two of the most important groups in contemporary music, M’Boom and The World Saxophone Quartet, at St John The Divine, to an audience of 2000. Max Roach remained an innovator and daring scientist of sound until the end of his days. No matter that he had been in the music over 60 years (Max debuted with Duke Ellington, sitting in for Sonny Greer at the Paramount, when he was 18!) he has always felt at home with the new, playing with each wave of avant that arrives, Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, Archie Shepp. Not to mention that in the 60’s Max had to suffer repercussions from the liberal crabs of backwardness that still control so much of the music, (recording, venues, tours, festivals, &c) for his revolutionary work with Abbey Lincoln involving himself with the struggle for equal rights and self determination for the Afro American people.
So that the call in 1981 for that “Grand Collaboration” should not have been a surprise to people knowing Max Roach’s constant identification with innovation and daring and knowledge of where the newest new was heading. The call in 2010 by David Murray’s 3-D family organization in conjunction with Birdland was very very welcome, especially since somebody let the dogs out with constant cries that “jazz is dead” which is just another advertisement for the mediocrity of the commercial vulgarity the corporations (or corpses) have tried to replace the serious and often revolutionary art which accompanied the political upsurges of 30 years ago.
The Birdland gig was a marvelous restating of what’s called “high art,” the emotional, intellectual and political epiphany of witnessing artists at the top of their skills working outside the jailhouse of moneyed shallowness. Both WSQ, now with Murray, Lake, Bluiett and the amazing James Carter and the latest M’Boom, Chambers, Mantilla, Fontaine, Smith and Berrios blew the top off Birdland. I was there three out of the five nights. And it seemed that the engagement drew a lot of the people I knew from the days when you could walk around New York and see Ayler, Dolphy, Ornette, Pharoah, Trane, Monk, Miles, Sassy, Abbey and Billie the same night.
The music involved compositions by most of the players. Bluiett’s Saxophone opened the sets I was at with its pummeling revox of all the R&B sax vamps we’ve ever heard with all the instruments entering and splitting wrapped in the huff huff puff puff of its rumbling, reaching a church howling stomping of the highest order. Among the phalanx of percussion instruments the interplay between say, Ray Mantilla’s wondrous congas, sometimes playing congas with bongos between his legs and the great Warren Smith vocalizing with the tympani and Eli Fontaine on the set or the bells or xylophone, Steve Berrios with timbales or the huge double sided congas and Joe Chambers like a Vibing melodic enforcement of calm direction in the eye of the M’Boom-icaine. Like Father Divine folks used to say, “…it was truly wonderful.”
Putting the WSQ and M’Boom together through all the music I thought made it even stronger. The saxophonists took turns turning the place out with their solos as well. Murray’s ferocious assault on silence I have long chronicled. David has now not only the musical menace of his approach but he has developed an ear for subtle lyricism to balance the immediately awesome. The duet he played with Bluiett on Bass saxophone with Bluiett surprisingly on clarinet was stunning.
But they are all more than able. Oliver Lake is certainly one of the most intelligent players extant, whose wiry sinewy alto makes his controlled emotional statements seem almost literary among the raging that goes on around him. The newest of the Sax Quartet, James Carter, as I have stated is himself an amazing player. He is always on the high wire of almost over the top performance values sounded against an incredible technical facility made valuable by a deeply felt old time, new time gut bucket blues feeling that allows him to speak, sing, grunt and holler through alto and especially soprano.
Two compositions I want to comment on, lst Warren Smith’s imaginative piece, “Couchette,” whose name, he explained to my hearing aid, means a suspended set of cots let down on long French train rides. It uses rapidly contrasting unison parts for percussion and then the four horns in unison back and forth. And this might be self-aggrandizement, a David Murray voicing of a poem of mine we did in Paris, “Imagine Obama Talking To A Fool” (Of course, now, we would say Fools!)
1/29/10