Harold Mabern at the John Coltrane Festival

Cover of the album being discussed

Smoke Sessions Records is the “house label” of the Smoke Jazz & Supper Club Lounge located in New York City a few blocks south of Columbia University. The club celebrates the end of the calendar year with an annual John Coltrane Festival that runs from the end of December to the beginning of January. Its latest release, Mabern Plays Coltrane, accounts for the final three nights of the festival on January 5, 6, and 7 of 2018.

On that occasion octogenarian jazz pianist Harold Mabern led a sextet with a front line consisting of Vincent Herring on alto saxophone, Eric Alexander on tenor saxophone, and Steve Davis on trombone. The other rhythm players were John Webber on bass and Joe Farnsworth on drums. Of the seven tracks on the album, six are Coltrane compositions. The other track is “My Favorite Things,” which, for many of us, is better known for Coltrane’s imaginative interpretation than for the original version composed by Richard Rodgers for The Sound of Music.

Mabern was a regular at Smoke, making it more than a little disappointing that he did not live to see the release of this album, having died at the age of 83 on September 17, 2019. Those 2018 performances are memorable for Mabern having found just the right sweet spot to honor some of Coltrane’s familiar idioms while inventing a fair share of his own. For example, the Coltrane version of “My Favorite Things” has become so familiar to informed jazz listeners that Mabern felt obliged to chart a new path to introducing the tune and then improvising on it.

On the other hand Mabern’s combo chose to honor the opening of “Blue Train” on the Blue Note album of the same name. This was also a sextet album, which featured Curtis Fuller on trombone. The close harmonies of the original recording were realized with trumpeter Lee Morgan joining Coltrane and Fuller. On Mabern Plays Coltrane, Morgan’s “soprano” line is taken by Herring. The blend is as convincing as ever, providing an “overture” for extended improvisations across the combo.

Indeed, one of the factors that makes this entire album interesting is the extent of space that Mabern allows for his front-line musicians. From that perspective one might suggest that Mabern is not as assertive as McCoy Tyner was in all of those sessions made for Impulse! Records. As a result, Mabern is neither a “primary” soloist nor a “rhythm” accompanist. Rather, the group is a “sextet of equals,” where the music allows each voice to have its appropriate say in the overall scheme of the entire album.

Mind you, for all of the tracks on this new release, I still expect to spend time revisiting my Coltrane albums; but the influence of Mabern’s sextet is likely to refine my listening practices.