Trio
3
Oliver
Lake, alto saxophone; Reggie Workman, bass; Andrew Cyrille,
drums and
percussion.
T he Old Church
1422 SW 11th Ave., 772-0772
8 pm Tuesday,
Oct. 24
$15
Between them,
these three free-swing heavyweights have been barometers
for the jazz climate of the past 40 years, riding tsunamis
instigated by their hurricane work with John Coltrane, Cecil
Taylor and the World Saxophone Quartet.
For those who have been paying attention, the Creative
Music Guild has presented some mind-bending trios over the
past two years. In 1999, the Guild corralled rare collaborations
by the Joseph Jarman-Leroy Jenkins-Myra Melford collective
Equal Interest and Fred Hersch, Michael Moore and Gerry
Hemingway's exquisite chamber jazz group Thirteen Ways.
The latest coup may top those two premium shows, as Trio
3 collaborators Oliver Lake, Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille
bring their democratic party to town.
Each member has 40 years' experience in exploratory jazz
and has been involved with some of the most urgent music
of the last century. Lake was born in Mariana, Ark.--Brother
Bill Clinton territory--so he knows his blues. He apprenticed
in St. Louis, hooking up with the city's seminal Black Artists
Group (BAG) and establishing a partnership with fellow saxophonists
and BAG men Julius Hemphill and Hamiet Bluiett that would
last their working lives. The three converged on the Manhattan
loft scene of the '70s, bringing along their mature Midwestern
mix of compositional structure and improv. In 1977, they
hooked up with 22-year-old Oakland sax wunderkind David
Murray to form the World Saxophone Quartet, quickly recognized
as one of the most innovative small groups in jazz history.
Lake's sax style has always been a torrid mix of free screech
and soulful shouting rooted in the blues, a tandem he inherited
from early influence Eric Dolphy. Like Dolphy, Lake takes
on an ebullient conversational tone in his playing, as if
the lines percolate from his mind to his lips, ganging up
and spilling forth like party chatter. He favors the shrill
highs of the alto and doesn't shy away from piercing cries
or squonks. Yet he always seems to drop back to the blues
and the jump of his youth.
That sense of free-swing schizophrenia is a group dynamic.
In the '50s, drummer Andrew Cyrille took cues from Miles
Davis' drummer of choice, Philly Joe Jones, one of the greatest
groove merchants of all time. But it was in Cecil Taylor's
crushing group of the late '60s and '70s that Cyrille made
his name. To spar with such a percussive pianist as Taylor,
Cyrille had to develop a style that slyly moved the musical
flow while adding percussive color. He released the rain
in Taylor's tempest, in the process becoming one of the
most instantly recognizable percussionists in jazz.
To walk the rhythmic high wire between such a furious pair
requires a bass player of strength and individuality. To
judge by Reggie Workman's steadfast survival in the stormy
waters of John Coltrane's crazed pitching and reeling on
the Africa Brass or Village Vanguard dates, the man is a
Gibraltar. His work with the Taylor-influenced pianist Marilyn
Crispell (with likeminded Gerry Hemingway on drums) is sturdy
but strident. More recently, his steerage of his own septet
on Cerebral Caverns shows a rare understanding of
East-meets-West compositional tools and spacious flow.
At the banquet table of jazz, certain players have lifelong
place settings. After playing together for the past 10 years,
Lake, Cyrille and Workman have chairs firmly in place. When
three such honorees sidle up together with their instrumental
plates loaded, it's a musical feast.
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