Jimmy Giuffre, Paul Bley and Steve Swallow — Free Fall Clarinet 1962 Revisited (Ezz-thetics)
In the summer and autumn of 1962, the trio of multi-reedsman Jimmy Giuffre, pianist Paul Bley and bassist Steve Swallow was reaching an apex. In the liner notes to this welcome reissue, Art Lange writes: “Without the support or consequence of assisting musicians, Giuffre's soliloquies were responsible, in the moment of creation, for their own drama, lyricism, and form — their own survival.” While specific reference is being made to the solo clarinet pieces interspersed throughout these extraordinary and pivotal trio sessions, the quotation is equally applicable to the rest of the music. Despite compositional elements being in play, their relationship to all subsequent events flouts whatever preconceived conventions might be ascribed to it, rendering the music both innovative and vital as spontaneous creation.
There are trio pieces, duos and solo clarinet offerings to enjoy. “Threewe,” is representative of the trio pieces in that its vocal lines offset any stigma associated with improvised pantonality of the period, ensuring beauty amidst what might at first appear chaotic. Almost like a ballad at the outset, the traditional hierarchy is quickly replaced by dialogic interplay, like the exquisitely subtle piano and bass call and response about a minute in, now completely audible due to the expert sonic restoration. As Bley starts to swing a few moments later, he broadens the scope of the trio’s investigation, encompassing the past into what sounds, six decades later, like it enshrines and anticipates in equal measure. The same might be said of “Spasmodic,” but it also brings to mind the then not-so-distant Lennie Tristano free-form sessions of 1949, a kind of improvisation for which the improvised music world was woefully unprepared. Unlike Ornette Coleman’s ground-breaking Atlantic recordings of three years earlier, composed elements are all but buried, their traces only audible on repeated audition.
Given Lange’s comments on the improvisation/composition boundaries, and he’s basing his observations about form and structure on Giuffre’s comments, it’s ironic that a solo like “Propulsion” wears a compositional heart on its sleeve. Despite purporting to be completely improvised, the multi-directional cascades and eventual proportionally constructed lines exhibit an astonishing logic as they evolve. Their repetition makes that progression both audible and easily comprehensible. Of course it’s not composed, and my own redrawing of that oft-discussed boundary is just as arbitrary. If there is a piece where full-fledged composition is in evidence, it’s the viscerally danceable “Divided Man.” The line is apparent from word one, delivered with requisite spunk and discipline. As Swallow swoops up and down the fretboard and Giuffre merrily counterpoints along this duo’s playful path, the sounds emanating from a time when such explorations were de rigueur, and thankfully uncategorized, are all the justification this reissue needs to stand proudly on the shelf. The excellent notes and improved sound are icing on the cake.
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Eric Dolphy during the recording sessions for George Russell's Ezz-thetics album at Riverside Studios. David Baker, trombonist, sits in the background. Steve Schapiro, 1961
John Coltrane had passed nine-months earlier, signaling the end of another hugely influential quartet. Bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones from the band were each working on their own projects but had time and inclination to accept Coleman’s invitation to join him on the sessions. Tenorist Dewey Redman, an old friend from Coleman’s Fort Worth origins, made the group a quartet. Popular opinion contends that the foursome wasn’t exactly a felicitous fit. Garrison and Jones were each grounded in the modal variants of jazz improvisation that their erstwhile leader helped expand and refine. Coleman’s approach focused on to applying equal value to the elements of melody, harmony, and rhythm in the service of individual an aggregate expression.
Stylistic differences between the musicians are noticeable with Jones sometimes sounding constricted by Coleman’s tempo choices and Garrison occasionally working overtime to bridge competing emphases, but the music is hardly the oil and water admixture certain critics ascribe to it. Garrison had a history with Coleman having been a former member of his quartet prior to tenure with Coltrane and was well acclimated to the earliest manifestations of the altoist’s harmolodic system. Despite the lack of prior firsthand experience, Jones was just as versatile, having worked in contexts as varied as Lee Konitz’s 1961 trio with Sonny Dallas, and Sonny Rollins’ progressively freer experiments from the tenorist’s pivotal 1957 Village Vanguard stand, forward.
Where the sessions do falter is in the varying quality of Coleman’s compositions. “The Garden of Souls” is a sprawling inaugural salvo, building gradually from unison and eliding horn volleys and anchoring Garrison bow and finger work into piquant solos. “Toy Dance,” “Broadway Blues,” and “Airborne” also feature substantial statements and flexible interplay that accentuates the personalities of the players while spooling sprightly from catchy cerulean hooks. “We Now Interrupt for a Commercial,” “Open to the Public,” and “Check Out Time” aren’t as compelling entries. The first piece feels like a slapdash novelty in its feature of the leader’s hyperventilating violin juxtaposed with interjections from a deadpan announcer’s voice, while the others fall slightly short of the energy and cohesion of their better realized siblings.
2021 marked my twenty-third-year writing about music. Across the avocation, I have taken hiatuses. One must, I think, to remain engaged, inspired and hopefully, relevant. Late September signaled another sabbatical and the good ship Dusted sailed on without my association. Reviewing for this publication and being part of its community of writers for the past two decades has been a pleasure and a privilege. It is a pursuit that I plan to resume in earnest in early-2022.
In the meantime, here is an annual tradition of trawling through the vast musical treasures released over the past twelve-months to construct a semblance of a list of those that sound elevated to these ears. There is so much in the world designed to deaden, diminish, and deter one’s faculties, but artists and the music they create past, present, and future continue to persevere and endear. Despite the tenacious primacy placed on self-interest in this country, we are still all in this together.
Wadada Leo Smith
Doyen Wadada Leo Smith was steadfast in celebrating his ascension to octogenarian early, opting to embrace the entirety of the year through a series of opulent and edifying releases on the Finnish TUM label. The pandemic pushed back, delaying several until after his December 18th birthday. The titles in the world as of this writing are all nigh essential, including the three-disc solo, Trumpet, the mix-and-match Sacred Ceremonies with Milford Graves and Bill Laswell, The Chicago Symphonies, conceived and scored for his all-star Great Lakes Quartets, and A Love Sonnet for Billie Holiday, which enlists pianist Vijay Iyer and drummer Jack DeJohnette in an album-length paean to the star-crossed chanteuse. The remaining titles are thankfully set to drop in February.
Joe McPhee
McPhee has an invariable and inviolable place on this list, year-end, year out. The passing of his brother Charlie in June 2020 was the biggest blow that year, but he kept a busy release schedule into the next across a variety of projects including the sensibly solo Route 84 Quarantine Blues and a handful of exciting ensemble ventures, among them: Flow Trio’s Winter Garden (ESP), the Blue Reality Quartet with Michael Marcus, Jay Rosen and Warren Smith, and The Sweet Spot, aptly titled in its assemblage of McPhee, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Michael Bisio and Juma Sultan, who turns 80 in April and appears to still be going strong.
Julius Hemphill — The Boye Multi-National Crusade for Harmony (New World)
Physical box sets are still plentiful and popular these days; this one managed to easily match the ask of its exorbitant price with the copious riches of its contents. Curated by the late Hemphill’s erstwhile student Marty Ehrlich, it is an “inside baseball” survey of the maestro’s work from the invaluable perspective of previously unreleased recordings. Vintage duets with musical soulmate and cello wunderkind Abdul Wadud? Check. String ensemble reimaginings of Charles Mingus compositions? Check. The list goes on, and Hemphill shines with scintillating consistency in every context, whether he is playing notes or not.
John Coltrane — Love Supreme Live in Seattle (Impulse)
It is hard not to harbor ill will towards the late Joe Brazil, who sat on the tape source that yielded this release for 43-years and subsequently left hungry listeners the world over in the dark as to its treasures. Yes, the balance is suspect, preserving Elvin Jones’ drums in stentorian clarity while recessing Coltrane to something of a muted, off-mic guest on his own gig. And yes, it is sidemen McCoy Tyner and Pharoah Sanders who subjectively shine most brightly in their respective solo features. But this is still very much a late-period Coltrane concert and one of plum circumstance and topical focus. The titular devotional suite receives a singularly expansive reading, one steeped in energy music extrapolations that set it starkly apart from both its earlier studio and Antibes renditions. Essential listening.
Stephen Riley
Another regular in these end of annum assessments, Riley’s now my depending-on-the-day favorite under-fifty saxophonist, simply because he aged out of the under-forty bracket. I Remember You astutely teams him with an old teacher, guitarist Vic Juris, who lamentably passed away several weeks post-session. Original Mind is similarly incandescent in its capture of a duo concert with pianist Ernest Turner at a Canadian patron’s home. Both deliver on the deep listening, colloquial improvisation that is not as common as it should be given the immense possibilities such intimate engagement accords.
James Brandon Lewis
Science no longer carries the pervasive cachet in public consciousness that it once did. Lewis’ music exists as an exhilarating rejoinder to this depressing directional turn. Inspired and shaped by the intricacies of molecular biology, his working quartet with pianist Auran Ortiz, bassist Brad Jones, and drummer Chad Taylor is proudly egghead on their sophomore album, Code of Being (Intakt), completely sidestepping pretentiousness for an abiding soulfulness and improvisational cooperation. Jesup Wagon (Tao Forms), is a sister project in that regard, working from a broader palette trading piano for cornet, cello, guembri and mbira in aural homage to African American scientist/inventor George Washington Carver.
Cecil Taylor
Taylor’s been gone almost four-years, but the archival wing of his discography is still yielding riches. Lifting the Bandstand (Listening Foundation) applies attention to a dynamic quartet as diverse in membership as it was in sound. Göttingen and Music for Two Continents – Live at Jazz Jamboree ’84 (Fundacja Sluchaj) feature two large ensembles: the first a sprawling variation on Taylor’s workshop venture, the second an iteration of his Euro-American orchestra bolstered by the heavy horn firepower of Frank Wright, Enrico Rava Tomaz Stanko. Corona (Corbett vs. Dempsey) frames a 1996 reunion duo with Sunny Murray with vocal choir while Live in Ruvo di Puglia 2000 (Enja) unearths a solo first set from a momentous concert with the massive Italian Instabile Orchestra. The master’s legacy lives.
Haasan Ibn Ali
A half-century’s worth of whispers and rumors finally came true this year with the release of two archival repositories returning pianist Haasan Ibn Ali to the limelight. Metaphysics dusts off his long-thought-lost quartet session for the Atlantic label with a twenty-something Odean Pope bringing Philly tenor heat. Retrospect in Retirement of Delay takes a deep and welcome dive into the solo side of Ali’s ivories-gilded expression through an extended program of standards and originals. Both are essential post-bop documents, indicative of a fiercely original improvisor who died tragically absent his due.
Fresh Sound
Strange that the most consistently satisfying jazz reissue label is this Spanish one that operates largely independent of stateside copyright considerations and still manages to produce product that frequently puts its domestic counterparts to pasture. This year signaled the launch of another series, “Rare and Obscure Jazz Albums,” which is absolute truth in advertising, returning seminal sides by the likes of reedist John La Porta and the Sandole Brothers (older sibling Dennis, a teacher of Coltrane) to circulation in two-fer form. Bassist Vinnie Burke, guitarists Jimmy Gourley and Arv Garrison, vibraphonist Bobby Montez, and pianist John Dennis (a contemporary of Haasan Ibn Ali) received similar regal treatment through their regular reissue line.
NoBusiness
This Lithuanian label is similarly persistent and dependable in its mission of balancing new free jazz and improvisation releases with impeccably curated archival editions. Most ambitious on their docket this year, Joel Futterman’s Creation Series: five densely packed discs of solo performances by the improvising pianist, doubling sparingly on curved soprano saxophone and creating arrestingly involving worlds of sound. Undulation, a fifth entry in the ongoing Sam Rivers archival series, documents a regrettably truncated fusion-infused tributary of his discography, while the Chap Chap series, revitalizing the work of key Japanese and Korean improvisers, highlights historical performances by saxophonist Mototeru Takagi and brassman Itaru Oki.
Ezz-thetics
A passing of torch in remastering engineers from the prolifically nonpareil Peter Pfister to the so-far worthy Michael Brandli, did little to decelerate the latest iteration of producer Werner Uehlinger’s Hat Hut label. The purview is still a balance of new recordings of creative improvised music and modern classical proponents and carefully refurbished and curated combinations of classic free jazz sessions from labels like ESP, Impulse and Fontana. Vocal detractors may question the legality and ethics of retooling these sacred texts, but there is no denying the proof of the enhanced fidelity on projects like New York Eye and Ear Control and Celebrating Bird at one hundred, the latter which adds further luster to iconic concert and studio sides by centenarian Charlie Parker.
Ches Smith’s We All Break — Path of Seven Colors (Pyroclastic)
Ches Smith had a cultural appropriation problem. Certain audience members started attributing the Vodou rhythms laced inventively through his music as his own creations. The drummer addressed the erroneously assumed authorship head on, forming a band with the Haitian musicians who had inspired him. This handsome, but still economical, box documents two of the ensemble’s iterations separated by a span of a half-decade and the outcome is one of the finest cross-cultural collaborations of improvised music in recent memory. Smith’s kit is a frequent fulcrum, but the singers and percussionists that surround him in both settings are on equal, if not more prominent footing in the figurative and literal dances that ensue. Everybody wins.
Natural Information Society with Evan Parker — descension (Out of Our Constrictions) (Eremite)
More of Joni as I tend to dig her most. Just a guitar or piano within reach and a repertoire threaded with both originals and folk covers that serves as a means of reciprocal satisfaction between her and audience(s). This second dispatch from singer/songwriter’s dusted-off and voluminous archives leans more to the former stripe. Delicate pathos and winding turns of veiled phrase and phrasing are still populous and personal no matter their sourcing. Fidelity is expectedly variable, but surprisingly listenable across the coffee house stages, TV and radio studios, living rooms and Carnegie Hall. Joni is vulnerably and venturously Joni throughout.
Baligh Hamd — Instrumental Modal Pop of 70s Egypt (Sublime Frequencies)
An invaluable hour-long survey of one of the undisputed innovators of Egyptian orchestral pop music, this assiduously assembled compilation still only scratches the surface of Hamdi’s vast discography. Similar to Salah Ragab in his openness to Western music forms and instruments as additives to a fundamentally Arabic musical foundation, Hamdi’s reach was wider, deeper, and more prolific. The sides gathered, sourced from 1970s albums, revel in intricate quarter-tone constructions and grand ensemble gestures that also benefit from the presence of ace instrumentalists like guitarist Omar Khorshid, organist Magdi al-Husseini, and accordionist Faruq Salama to interpret them. It is the kind of keenly programmed teaser disc that begs for an expansive box set follow-up.
Pastor TL Barrett & the Youth for Christ Choir (Numero)
A Chicago spiritual staple, Pastor TL Barrett recognized that rolling with the idiomatic changes instigated by soul music and proactively involving youth in his vibrant Southside ministry were crucial strategies in successfully spreading the gospel. Barrett recorded a string of albums in the 1970s that are optimal candidates for the royal Numero Group treatment. This CD edition gathering four of the finest of them along with a fifth disc of extras is an effective antidote to the “exorbitantly-priced vinyl blues.” The music is keenly indicative of that contemporaneous “Trojan Horse” tactic of cloaking religious teachings in musical trappings popular with secular circles to create a supercharged alloy equally appealing to audiences suited to both Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings.
Smokey Hogg — The Texas Blues of… (Ace)
Texan Smokey Hogg left a lot to be desired as an accommodating bandleader. Ruled by an idiosyncratic rhythmic compass that rivaled the likes of Jenks “Tex” Carman or John Lee Hooker, he often left his sideman struggling to conventionally accompany him. Keeping up with and catering to his quixotic whims just came with the gig. This compilation, the fifth from the UK Ace imprint, captures more of the weirdly satisfying gestalt Hogg was miraculously able to maintain much of the time. His vocals and guitar spill and slosh over valiant, often futile, backing and somehow stay compelling through a confluence of swagger and ad-lib invention. Solo sides confirm the scrupulous method undergirding his outward-facing arbitrariness. File under music ill-suited for fence-sitters.
V/A — Shake the Foundations: Militant Funk & the Post Punk Dancefloor, 1978-1984 (Cherry Red)
The UK-based Cherry Red imprint has cobbled a cottage industry out of curatorial box sets that also serve as enlightening aural textbooks around musical genres and idioms. This three-disc set applies a research lens to a loosely defined species of funk-influenced post punk that sprang up in British clubs at the cusp of the 1970s. Backbeats and corpulent, rolling bass lines abound, vying with jangly guitars, staccato synths and the occasional compact horn section to express attitude and anomie without sacrificing the vital supremacy of epic grooves. Simple Minds, Jah Wobble, Vicious Pink, Furniture, Perfect Zebras and forty-four other bands get single track opportunities to impart their parts in shaping the scene.
Dollar Vinyl
It is a not-so-secret secret that I have lived nearly the entirety of my adult life without a turntable. That has not precluded the procurement of vinyl, but it has necessitated playing it on borrowed equipment. The reasons behind the admittedly odd abstention fall to spatial considerations and spousal appeasement, but my wife signaled a sea change when she reversed past proclamations and gifted me a record player for my 50th birthday. Since then, it has been self-determined limitations of selectivity and a preference for dollar-priced vinyl with specific priority placed on vintage belly-dancing and Hawaiian/country steel guitar recordings. The specimen below is an especially enjoyable envoy from the first category and made all the better by the presence of a surf-meets-Anatolia guitarist in the accompanying band who arguably was on a steady diet of Omar Khorshid albums at the time.
Unleash the Archers
As a writer who professes a wide purview when it comes to ingesting music, I can still be stubbornly parochial towards certain genres. This is true of metal, where dabbling in unfamiliar bands is something done only rarely and sparingly. Unleash the Archers came to my attention during a lapse in defenses. Initially chafed by their sci-fi-meets-sorcery bombast and theatrics, these traits, amplified through unabashed earnestness that feels gloriously grounded in their British Columbian roots, are now aspects I unreservedly adore. Iron Maiden and Queensryche are indelible antecedents, but Brittany Slayes’ stratospheric pipes, twining melody-musclebound guitars, a Spinal Tap-style, revolving bass chair, and the math-meets-meteorological event that is often Scott Buchanan’s properly pummeled cans make for a reliably engrossing, fist-pumping, power metal result.
Twenty-five more in loosely stochastic order:
Roscoe Mitchell & Mike Reed - Ritual & the Dance (Astral Spirits)
JD Allen – Queen City (Savant)
Nicole Mitchell/ Tomeka Reid/ Mike Reed – Then There’s This (Astral Spirits)
Ben Goldberg – Everything Happens to Be (Bag Productions)
Roscoe Mitchell/ Sandy Ewen/ Damon Smith/ Weasel Walter – A Railroad Spike Forms the Voice (ugEXPLODE)
Claire Chase – Density 2036 (Corbett vs. Dempsey)
Jamie Branch – Fly or Die Live (International Anthem)
Lee Morgan – Complete Live at the Lighthouse (Blue Note)
Roy Brooks – Understanding (Reel to Real)
Ray Russell – Forget to Remember, Live Vol. 2 1970 (Jazz in Britain)
Sun Ra – Lanquidity (Philly Jazz/Strut)
Lloyd McNeil – Tori (Baobab/Soul Jazz)
JR Monterose – JR is Alive in Amsterdam (HSM/Ultra Vybe)
Paul Bley Trios – Touching & Blood Revisited (Ezz-thetics)
Canadian pianist Paul Bley was an inarguable artistic giant further blessed with the advantage of longevity. His vast and varied professional career stretched from the nascent jazz modernism of the 1950s to an eventual retirement six-years prior to his passing at the age of 83 in 2016. Across that temporal distance he played virtually every style within the idiom and in the cumulative process created a signature approach to improvisation bridging freedom and structure entirely his own. Touching & Blood Revisited surveys a particularly fertile pair of points on that continuum, and finds Bley firmly embracing the singular vernacular that would shape his investigations in the coming decades.
Bill Evans is a common, if mostly imperfect and reductionist, corollary to Bley. Both dealt in introspective and impressionistic expression often rooted in figurative pastoralism. But where Evans often painted pianistic portraits in vibrant pastels, Bley frequently smudged, shaded and elided his shapes in charcoals. That preference for grain and texture is all over the excursions that make up the disc’s composite program. Drummer Barry Altschul is a common denominator of both dates, which are separated by almost exactly a year. Bassist Kent Carter serves as fulcrum on the first from November 1965 in a program that combines Bley originals with a handful of other compositions from his erstwhile spouses Annette Peacock and Carla Bley.
The trio approaches the tunes faithfully, but with ears also collectively cocked to opportunities for loose-limbed extemporization. “Cartoon” echoes its namesake, expanding and contracting on the complimentary surfaces set up by stuttering chords, snapping strings and swishing brushes. “Touching” is delicacy coupled with curled melancholy, Altschul’s spare cymbals framing Bley’s staggered statement of theme. Peacock’s “Mazatlan” pivots on a jaunty Latin syncopation and a tightly wound progression parsed by Bley’s overlapping hands. There’s a similar relationship between density and openness on the closing “Pablo” as Carter and Altschul agitate a series of cross-rhythms under the leader’s questing chords.
“Blood” switches locales from Copenhagen to The Netherlands with Mark Levinson installed on bass in place of Carter. Sprawling the entirety of an LP side, the largely improvised performance builds from a commodious compositional lattice by Peacock. Long-form improvisational excursions rooted in rhythm and melody were still something of an exception when it was recorded and the players’ collective concentration over the course is remarkable, especially considering its vintage. Altschul, in particular, is fire, ranging all over his kit and forging an energy source that neither falters nor overwhelms. Levinson knows when to lay out and Bley balances his leader role with an unwavering respect for his colleagues. It’s a platinum standard fidelity toward teamwork that he would largely sustain over the next half-century.
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Christopher Kunz & Florian Fischer – Die Unwucht (Ezz-thetics)
Translated from German as “the unbalance,” Die Unwucht is also the shorthand sobriquet for the duo of saxophonist Christopher Kunz and Florian Fischer. Two twenty-something improvisers who are also formally trained musicians, they show an immediate acumen toward the extant recorded lineage pairing their two instruments. Coltrane and Ali. Shepp and Roach. Brötzmann and Drake. The list encapsulating precedence is extensive. Bringing a distinct and authentic language to the format could easily be construed as daunting or even futile.
 “Pflock” opens with a drifting cloudbank of layered toms, scraped cymbals and punctuating bells. Kunz’s tenor alights in porous, legato purrs that plumb the lower register and distort into growls. “Weber” finds Kunz blowing blowsy, cotton-textured gusts as Fischer patters and clatters in concert beside him. On “Netting” the drummer matches his partner’s long and coiled tones with punctuations from rolled snare and scraped metal that accelerate in along vectors of intensity and proximity. In each exchange, the pivots feel natural and coherent, two players engaging and adjusting in real time.
“From Another Time” and “Pedestrian Mode” follow different trajectories but contain comparable amounts of cooperative clarity and cohesion. Brushed snare skin sets the scene on the first, soon joined by whirring and murmuring overtones from Kunz’s soprano. The second starts from similar percussive materials, this time accompanied by barely audible tenor trails that gradually gain definition and grain. As with the earlier sections, it’s reflective of purposefully imbalanced discourse constructed not from words, but rather organized sounds that are just as layered with shared and revealing meaning.
Albert Ayler Quintet – 1966: Berlin, Lörrach, Paris & Stockholm. Revisited (Ezz-thetics)
Accurate, though arguably unwieldly in a titular sense, 1966: Berlin, Lörrach, Paris & Stockholm. Revisited is at once a mouthful and a partial accounting of the itinerary taken by the Albert Ayler Quintet across Europe in November of the named year. Ayler had made previous continental circuits with varying degrees of receptiveness and remuneration, but these dates represented a leap in the solidification and ascendancy to a group sound. The Aylers had a relationship similar to Cannonball and Nat Adderley with Albert calling the musical shots and brother Don rising to the role of reliable fraternal foil on and off stage. The rest of the band was relatively new, but ready to put an indelible aggregate stamp on the leader’s singular songbook.
This Ezz-thetics collection marks the fourth iteration of this material on the label and its Hat Hut-affiliated predecessors. It also presents another welcome opportunity for ace engineer Peter Pfister to take a crack at remastering the source recordings and it is here that the set proves most revelatory. The music was originally collated from ancient radio recordings of concert and festival performances that clouded violinist Michel Samson, bassist William Folwell and drummer Beaver Harris in varying degrees of aural murk. Canted toward Ayler’s incandescent tenor, the rich group dynamics of the ensemble were less reliably evident amidst the accompanying detritus.
Through sequential efforts Pfister’s successfully sanded away much of the sonic grime to the extent that the classically-trained Samson, in particular, sounds remarkably refurbished, especially in this latest restoration. Harris’ arco work, especially on strings-forward pieces like the Berlin hybrid version of “Ghosts-Bells” exudes a warmly glowing throb. Harris’s cans are still somewhat compromised, his cymbals and bass drum blunted by antecedent acoustics, but his powerful snare shots now carry greater clarity and heft. Even at its most tempestuous, there’s an earnestness to the band’s outpourings that engages on emotional level.
Sixteen tracks add up to two-plus hours of music and offer a prismatic Greatest Hits package of sorts. “Truth is Marching In,” “Our Prayer,” and “Omega (Is the Alpha)” are all represented in multiple renderings. The ecstatic energy of each one is immediately expansive and affecting. Albert’s name topped the marquees, but the Aylers routinely engaged their bandmates from a perspective of collectivist inclusion. Don’s protean trumpet blasts became the elemental yin to the yang contained in Albert’s capacious saxophone prowess. A similar juxtaposition plays out in the music as it exudes ingrained ties to the jazz lineage while also somehow remaining illustriously and radically apart.
Economy-sized ensembles are sort of the default setting in Albert Ayler’s tragically fixed discography. Trios abound, from his earliest recordings in the company of a pair of ill-equipped and recalcitrant Swedes to the seminal expletive-in-a-cathedral unit involving Gary Peacock and Sunny Murray. Quartets are also plentiful, with first Don Cherry and then sibling Donald following in fielding brass. Spirits Rejoice & Bells Revisited renews attention on a pair of pivotal larger group episodes, one concert, the other captured in a concert hall sans audience, where Ayler expanded measurably on the polyphonic possibilities of his music.
Sequencing situates the second performance first, a sextet with the brothers Ayler joined by altoist Charles Tyler, bassist Henry Grimes and old colleagues Peacock and Murray. Five originals cover a spectrum of bases starting with the clarion march “Spirits Rejoice” which is redolent with the sanctified Salvation Army atmosphere that was Albert’s trademark. Regal statement of an Aeolian theme is answered by Tyler’s limpid asides before a conflagration of collective free improvisation takes hold. “Holy Family,” by comparison, is almost jukebox-worthy in its shimmy-powered concision and Call Cobbs joins the fun on flurried and florid harpsichord for “Angel.”
“Bells” comes from an engagement at New York’s Town Hall four months earlier with bassist Lewis Worrell in place of Grimes and Peacock. Essayist Brian Olewnick makes astute linkages to Ornette Coleman’s “Free Jazz” in terms of its general linkage free and thematic passages, but Ayler’s extended design sounds more elemental and unhinged from the jump. Donald is a molten metallic fount abetted by his older brother’s exhortations and those of Tyler who was apparently making his recorded debut on the date. A series of exchanges ensues, broken by audience applause and shifts to subgroupings including a duet passage by leader and Peacock that’s never sounded clearer.
That new clarity dials focus directly to audio engineer Peter Pfister and it’s why this particular reissue really matters. Pfister has become a continuous and crucial footnote to these reissues on the Ezz-thetics imprint. As with earlier projects, he defogs and brightens the source material substantially, bringing particularly potent boosts to the bassists and Murray’s vocalizations. The effect is as conspicuous and revelatory as to render earlier ESP editions of the music instantly obsolete. Ayler’s tenor sound, a helical weave of textured striations and colors, is absolutely deserving of the royal aural treatment so copiously applied.
