Last night Bird & Beckett Books and Records presented its latest live-streamed performance among the many shelves of books at the venue. The performance was given by the Grex duo of guitarist Karl Evangelista and keyboardist Rei Scampavia, and the program was a tribute concert presenting all five tracks from Alice Coltrane’s album Journey in Satchidananda. These were followed by an “encore” performance of “Leo,” from John Coltrane’s Interstellar Space album, recorded in 1967, the year of his death. The video content of the performance has now been archived as part of the Facebook collection of Past Live Videos from Bird & Beckett.
Journey in Satchidananda is notable for the appearance of saxophonist Pharoah Sanders as “guest artist” on all five of the tracks. The first four were recorded at the Coltrane home studio by a quartet with rhythm provided by Cecil McBee on bass and Rashied Ali on drums, along with additional percussion from Tulsi and Majid Shabazz. Alice alternated between piano and harp. The final track, “Isis and Osiris,” was recorded at the Village Gate with Charlie Haden replacing Ali. Vishnu Wood joined the quartet on oud, and Alice complemented his plucked performance on harp.
While all five of the tracks were recorded by Alice, Sanders’ performance provided the thematic focus. Thus, Evangelista’s challenge was to take the rich outpouring of thematic content coming out of Sanders’ soprano saxophone and realize it through electric guitar riffs. By way of “full disclaimer,” I should observe that the Journey in Satchidananda album was unfamiliar to me before I learned about last night’s concert. On the other hand, I have had many opportunities to listen to Sanders’ work, primarily through recordings that he made with Coltrane.
Evangelista’s performance reawakened all those memories of Sanders. He seemed to have internalized all the twists and turns of Sanders’ elaborate melodic contours. While he could not bring Sanders’ breath control into his emulation, Evangelista still delivered approaches to phrasing that reflected Sanders’ technique. Scampavia then took care of “all of the rest,” working with two electronic keyboards and a drum machine. Granted, no drum machine can do justice to Ali’s work with both Coltranes; so that technology served only to provide a firm foundation for the keyboard and guitar work. (In that context it is worth noting that “Leo” was a duo performed by John and Ali.)
On the receiving end, the only real problem involved the capture technology. My only previous encounter with one of these Bird & Beckett gigs came from the two one-hour videos of tenor saxophonist Philip Greenlief giving a solo account of the music of Thelonious Monk. That performance required only a single microphone.
Between the thick textures of polyphony and the diversity of the instrumentation, Grex required more extensive capture technology. However, I am not sure that Bird & Beckett provided it; and, if it was provided, it was not particularly well-managed. Thus, one had no trouble observing Scampavia spinning out the elaborate passages for keyboard and harp that Alice provided, but almost all of those passages were barely audible almost all of the time. There also seemed to have been a network glitch, which required a second start for “Leo;” but that did not entail any improvement in the overall balance of the two performers.
Nevertheless, I found the opportunity to reflect back on the work of both Coltranes to be a satisfying one. All of my recordings predate the departure of McCoy Tyner and his replacement by Alice. However, my only opportunity to hear Coltrane in performance, during my undergraduate years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, took place after Alice had joined the group. Last night’s performance reminded me that there are still some major gaps in my collection of jazz recordings that need to be filled.
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