Review | Ravi Coltrane Celebrates A Love Supreme | San Francisco
By Team JamBase Dec 19, 2014 • 2:00 pm PST
Words by: Eric Podolsky
Ravi Coltrane & Special Guests -A Love Supreme 50th Anniversary :: 12.10.14 :: SFJAZZ:: San Francisco, CA :: Late Show
It’s hard to believe, but this December is the 50th anniversary of the recording of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme (ALS), and the influence of the album’s spiritual musical approach on an entire generation of musicians cannot be understated. Don’t forget that this was the still-very-square year of 1964, and when it was dropped, the public had never before experienced any jazz music that contained this much overwhelming spiritual depth. It went on to sell half a million copies, unprecedented for a jazz album of any kind.
In honor of the album’s golden anniversary, SFJAZZ put together a series of tribute performances centered around Coltrane’s son Ravi Coltrane. One of these shows featured an all-star ensemble of modern jazz, many of which have direct connections to John Coltrane. This particular show started as a trio, with Matt Garrison on electric bass (original Coltrane bassist Jimmy Garrison’s son) and Marcus Gilmore on drums (jazz drummer and Coltrane collaborator Roy Haynes’s grandson).
The set began with a thoughtful, chord-heavy bass solo from Garrison that was enhanced and filtered through some laptop effects to create a strange soundscape of electronic sounds. Coltrane soon joined in on tenor sax with Gilmore, and the music took on a sense of arrival — open and free and floating in the ether on the Coltrane tune “Wise One,” the first song from the evening’s all-Coltrane setlist. The free flow had a distinctive ALS vibe, but Garrison’s electric bass made it something very different. His exploratory playing almost served a keyboard role, with ample chords and counter-melodies weaving in between Ravi’s questioning sax lines.
The music soon dissolved into a unique drum solo, in which Gilmore’s flurried playing was structured like sentences, with commas and pauses for “breaths.” Soon after, the band was joined by Adam Rogers on guitar and Nicholas Payton on trumpet and Fender Rhodes, who each made their presence felt immediately with incendiary, soulfully free solos. This was truly music played in the spirit of ALS, and yet it felt completely in the moment and modern, filtered through the lens of jazz’s current generation.
A percussion-less take on “Lonnie’s Lament” followed — a sad, lonely tune full of loss and yearning that was made all the more haunting by the lack of drums. Things got fiery soon after with “Your Lady,” which saw Peyton break loose with boiling, yearning trumpet flurries that pushed Gilmore to hit the drums harder and harder. By this point in the show, the supreme flow was well at work, and it was time to dive into the main event — with those four unmistakable, hypnotizing bass notes, Garrison announced the arrival of ALS with “Acknowledgement,” and we dove into the meat of the set.
The next twenty minutes or so flew by in an ethereal journey as Ravi led the way with his probing, abstract tenor, shining his light into the unknown and making it swing. Every musician had their time to shine and stretch out with modal, expressionistic solos, pushing the boundaries of the original composition to new places that allowed each soloist’s personality to come out. Rogers was clean and thoughtful on guitar, Peyton was muscular and soulful on trumpet, Garrison was the wild card with his strange and unpredictable bass phrasing, and Ravi pushed it all forward, a wave of free-flowing, abstract ideas and phrases pouring out of him. The jam peaked in a frenzy, and slowly descended back down to a calm finale, arriving at the meditative “Psalm” to close the set on a delicate note. With every musician exchanging hugs at the end, it was clear that this was a special treat for both musicians and audience alike. The vibe surrounding ALS is almost sacred, and this set was able to capture that aura while creating some completely original music. Papa Coltrane would certainly be proud.
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