THE LANDFILL CHRONICLES — Saxophone Summit Part 2 — Roundtable Conversation: Gathering the Spirits with Joe Lovano, Dave Liebman and Michael Brecker (2004)
Chapter 12.2
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THE LANDFILL CHRONICLES — the book-in-progress of Conversations on Eclectic Music Elevated to a State of Art, published on Medium
By Dan Ouellette
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PART 2—The Roundtable Conversation
“It’s not entertainment.” —Michael Brecker
When you first started playing together as the Saxophone Summit, was it a battle of the saxes, a cutting contest?
Dave: Joe said one night after an early Birdland gig that it was like three quartets. We didn’t play so much together then. When Mike soloed, it was the Michael Brecker Quartet; with Joe, it was the Joe Lovano Quartet. But we started to gravitate toward interaction, especially with a piece like “Meditations” that Coltrane purposely wrote to be like a group choir.
Joe: We’re more into ensemble playing than jousting. We’re playing with each other to create music together. That rarely happened with cats in the early days of saxophone meetings. Yet a lot of the traditional get-in-your-face competitive kind of playing happens naturally, not only among saxes but also between you and the drummer rhythmically, or with the pianist harmonically. But that’s about challenging each other to take the music somewhere else.
On the new recording, there are moments like during my tune “Alexander the Great” where we trade phrases. We do get in each other’s face. We try to take what someone just played and complement each other. It’s like, “Oh, man, what you just played was beautiful, but, hey, listen to this.”
Dave: It’s like what Mike and I were a part of in the late ’60s and early ’70s in the loft scene in New York. It was free jazz with Coltrane’s “Ascension” as the model. For hours, cats would play without anyone ever actually soloing. That spirit was a part of our youth.
Michael: There was a lot of fire back then. I remember it with fondness. We did a lot of playing and experimenting together. The loft scene gave us a way to communicate with each other about the kind of music Coltrane was playing. It was a great learning experience. It ended when we all got too busy.
Dave: Musically and socially it was an amazing time. In a way, we’re revisiting that spirit.
Joe: Saxophone Summit is influenced by that ensemble approach. For me, Coltrane’s recordings like Meditations, Kula Se Mama, Ascension and Live at the Village Vanguard Again were influential. That way of playing together and calling the spirits as a unit inspired me to want to play, to come to New York and meet with guys like Dave and Mike. I wanted to sit in and challenge myself to be in a situation that went beyond just a song that I studied. A lot of people hide behind the tune they play. From Coltrane and Ornette and Miles, I learned to want to live in the music and in the moment because that’s where the most creative things happen.
You certainly complement each other on Trane’s “India.”
Dave: I always played “India” on flute. During the course of the tour we all picked up flutes in places like Budapest and Turkey. So we developed it as a nice way to break up the saxophone texture. It became a real fun part of our show, an extension of what we do on the saxophones.
Joe: The three flutes have different ranges and tonality. Each one complements the arrangement Dave wrote. We’ve been exploring this tune since the first time we played together.
Dave: Everyone talks about world music today, but Trane was looking into it back in the early sixties. He was there already.
Michael: The way “India” works is how we project our feelings throughout the recording. We follow the rhythm changes and then get free. Each one of our solos is a send-off into the next.
Joe: Everyone listens to each other. We each bring different colors and tonalities with our instruments, and the music takes on a free and open journey. We’re not just playing at the same time. We’re playing together within the orchestration of the piece. The way the rhythm section reacts is the key to making each tune a beautiful journey. You can hear that on Mike’s tune “Gathering of Spirits,” which is an amazing collective improvisation.
Then there’s Trane’s “Peace on Earth,” which is really important to our group. Dave brought in a number of beautiful ballads from the later period. But this one is special because of the way we share the melody and the phrases.
Even though Coltrane wrote some incredible music late in his career, why do you think people walked out of his shows?
Dave: A lot of people still don’t understand that music.
Joe: He was moving fast.
Dave: It’s like why people don’t listen to Schoenberg. The music is difficult, complicated.
Joe: Trane’s music is sophisticated harmonically and rhythmically. There’s a density of sound, whether he was playing in a club or at Philharmonic Hall. It’s not for the casual listener.
Michael: It’s not entertainment.
Joe: In his later repertoire, Coltrane was moving so quickly he surprised the cats he was playing with. It’s different now. Jazz is a big word. There’s a variety of sounds and a lot of different influences coming into the music. Back in Trane’s day, the core crowd of jazz listeners in New York was made up of artists and intellectuals.
Dave: I think audiences didn’t understand Coltrane because many people want to hear what they grew up with and can identify with. They wanted to hear “My Favorite Things.” I remember once hearing him play at the Philharmonic. He started out with the Tibetan chant of the dead, the heaviest chant of them all. But then he eventually went into “My Favorite Things” and everyone started applauding. Of course, after the melody and chorus, Coltrane kept going for the next hour and a quarter with all these cats like Pharoah Sanders and Albert Ayler taking over. It was chaotic. That’s when people left. He played his signature tune, but even then, he wouldn’t give up where he was going. Amazing.
Michael: The night I saw him in Philly, “My Favorite Things” was the encore. It was a free version, but even so it brought the house down.
Joe: You go back and listen to those recordings like Live at the Village Vanguard Again, and now it sounds orderly. It all falls into place. You can hear the orchestration of it.
Michael: Coltrane might have had a subtle premonition.
Dave: Yeah, he probably knew he wasn’t going to live long. It sounds like he was rushing toward the finale, like Beethoven with last movement of his Ninth Symphony. You hear the music and you know he knows something. You feel it.
END Part 2
Part 3 of the 3-part chapter arrives later this week.
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