Evenings At The Village Gate: John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy

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We should be grateful for what we have got, however, for the tape reels concerned disappeared from view around 1968 and were only rediscovered, by chance, in 2019 (the first four tunes) and 2021 ("Africa"). You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.

The poet and jazz critic Amiri Baraka (then known as LeRoi Jones), in his gorgeous liner notes to Live at Birdland, called McCoy Tyner “the polished formalist of the group” and claimed that he played more cautiously than his bandmates. Baraka’s comment became writing on the wall—in 1965, Coltrane replaced Tyner with his wife, Alice Coltrane. But the saxophonist was merely trying out something new, not deriding something old. Perhaps because he died tragically young, it’s easy to imagine that Coltrane had a destination in mind with his music, some heavenly realm formed of sacred geometries and unceasing magic-hour light, where an even more classic quartet plays nonstop with Rudy Van Gelder perched behind the sound boards. In reality, had Coltrane lived to ripe old age, he would have continued to try out different styles, bands, influences and ideas, no doubt jamming with past collaborators along the way. Squabbles about sound quality, and comparisons between various iterations of his quartet, are never convincing: John Coltrane cared about change, not perfection. The recordings came into the possession of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, where it was lost. Though the tapes were briefly rediscovered, they disappeared again in the Library’s archives for several more decades.In a piece on jazz drumming for Paste, Geoffrey Himes called this the "most exciting jazz reissue of the year" and called special attention to Elvin Jones. [14]

This sort of glowing reception has not always been the case for Trane, however – particularly during his own lifetime, it’s worth mentioning – as this recording highlights a performance from an era that brought much turmoil for one of the most iconic figures of 20th-century jazz. In fact, critics and lay audiences alike found themselves fraught with animosity in opposition to the challenging and experimental nature of the performer’s content at the time. Contemporary listeners in 1961 no doubt would have stumbled across a review in DownBeatreferring to his music made in collaboration with Dolphy as "anarchistic" and "a horrifying demonstration of what appears to be a growing anti-jazz trend." This comes as no surprise, given the most up-to-date impression of the saxophonist would have been his signature tune which, at that time, had more sooner been associated with the warbling role of a young Austrian nun. Eric Dolphy in Copenhagen, 1961 (Image: JP Jazz Archive/Redferns) If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month.

CRITIC REVIEWS

Freeman, Phil (July 24, 2023). "Chief Adjuah Puts Down The Horn". Ugly Beauty: The Month in Jazz. Stereogum . Retrieved July 28, 2023. In 2023, we know there are many unreleased Coltrane recordings out there. There are, for instance, around 84 CDs-worth of material in the collection of live tapes the saxophonist and Coltrane aficionado Frank Tiberi made between 1960 and 1964. The recordings, however, are not as felicitous as those heard on Evenings At The Village Gate, and Impulse! and Tiberi do not feel they are candidates for release right now. But sound-restoration technology is improving all the time, and fast, and it is possible that in the not too distant future some at least of the tapes will be of a high enough audio standard to permit release.

August 1961. Just three months (and an eight-minute walk) before the start of Coltrane's mind-bending, soul-searching run at the Village Vanguard that culminated in the release Coltrane Live at the Village Vanguard (Impulse!, 1962) and expanded in 1997 with the 4CD box set The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings (Impulse!). In an essay in the album booklet, Alderson tells the story. Here is an extract: "In 1965 and '66, I was hired to build Bob Dylan's stage sound system and went on the road with him. Around that time, I also got involved with the Institute of Sound at Carnegie Hall, a small non-profit run by a former child actor named Richard Stryker, which was dedicated to preserving historic recordings, primarily opera.By 1961, Coltrane had begun experimenting with modes and genre, moving towards the avant-garde sound that would be featured on records like Africa/Brass. [2] This period of experimentation proved highly controversial and Coltrane and collaborator Eric Dolphy faced criticism that their music during this period was "anti-jazz". [4] The recordings on this album are from a brief residency in mid-1961 that the duo had at the Village Gate and were recorded for posterity's sake by engineer Richard Alderson. They were rediscovered decades later in a New York Public Library collection. [2] Critical reception [ edit ] A photograph of Eric Dolphy (left) and John Coltrane taken by Herb Snitzer during a performance at the Village Gate in New York in 1961. Rightly understood, the new release (available on CD, vinyl, and digital formats) is as valuable for tyros as for aficionados. I don’t believe in cultural starter sets; with great artists, there’s no point to beginning at a simpler, more conventional stage, or with a sampler. In my experience, what matters is to come in where the passion runs high, and in the Village Gate album, the entire band plays with an astonishing, even overwhelming intensity. The spectrum of achievements that the recording documents for Coltrane and Dolphy is narrow, but it reaches further into the musical future—the musicians’ and that of jazz at large—than any other recordings of theirs from the early sixties that I’ve heard. Here, Coltrane, in particular, offers audacious premonitions of a jazz avant-garde, running years ahead to prefigure the way he’d be playing from 1965 through the end of his life, in 1967.

Album closer “Africa” emerged from one of those nights. It’s the only live rendition of the Africa/Brass centerpiece known to exist on tape. The song begins with applause, as the band teases a fleeting figure from a George Gershwin tune that Coltrane reinvented, “Summertime.” Davis plunks away regularly, enabling Tyner to sprint up and down the keys and Workman to navigate a searching bass solo. Africa/Brass was Coltrane’s most unusual album in the busy year of 1961, and it landed on shelves near the end of his run at the downtown venue. The inclusion from his latest, weirdest disc coaxes the audience to polite applause and probably some puzzlement, too. Brody, Richard (July 18, 2023). "A Newly Discovered Realm of Accomplishment for John Coltrane". Culture Desk. The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. OCLC 320541675 . Retrieved July 29, 2023. And sometimes the music is downright holy. Welcome to the church known as the Village Gate. Welcome to Evenings At The Village Gate: John Coltrane With Eric Dolphy. The Impulse! label has released several outstanding John Coltrane live albums since 2000. With the exception of the latest, the sensational John Coltrane With Eric Dolphy: Evenings At The Village Gate (2023), each was recorded in 1965, the year when Coltrane's classic quartet with pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones, was at its zenith. The 2-CD A Love Supreme: Deluxe Edition (2002), which included a recording, previously available with poor audio only, of Coltrane's signature suite at the Antibes Jazz Festival in July, was followed by another 2-CD, One Down, One Up (2005), recorded at New York's Half Note in March and May. More recently there was A Love Supreme: Live In Seattle (2021), which featured an augmented lineup at the city's Penthouse in October. Coltrane was a late bloomer. Born in 1926, he came to prominence as a sideman, playing tenor saxophone in Miles Davis’s groups, in 1955, and stayed with him, on and off, through 1960. Though Coltrane made many recordings under his own name throughout that time, only in 1960 did he form his own working band, the core of which, heard here, is the pianist McCoy Tyner and the drummer Elvin Jones. (On “Evenings at the Village Gate,” two bassists, Reggie Workman and Art Davis, perform together.) Dolphy, too, had a long musical gestation. Born in 1928 in Los Angeles, he came to New York in 1959, and began to record as a leader in 1960, but worked mainly as a sideman (notably, in Charles Mingus’s group). In the album’s liner notes, Ashley Kahn quotes an interview with Coltrane from soon after this gig: Coltrane said that he and Dolphy had been “talking music for quite a few years, since about 1954.” He added, “A few months ago Eric was in New York, where the group was working, and he felt like playing, wanted to come down and sit in. So I told him to come on down and play, and he did—and turned us all around.”The new release features essays from two participants from those evenings, Workman and Alderson, and insightful pieces by historian Ashley Kahn and jazz luminaries Branford Marsalis and Lakecia Benjamin.