Temple Celebrates Philadelphia’s Jazz History

Cover design for the recording being discussed (courtesy of DL Media)

A little less than a month ago, the Temple University Boyer College of Music and Dance released an album on its “house label,” BCM&D Records, entitled Fly With the Wind. This is a relatively short recording, running less than 40 minutes; and it consists of only four tracks. However, each of those tracks is a tribute to an iconic jazz figure living in Philadelphia (which, for those that do not know, is the home of Temple University). As of this writing, the best source for this album is the Qobuz Store, which has created a Web page for both digital download and unlimited streaming (but not a physical CD).

The performances on this album are by the Temple Jazz Sextet, six members of Temple’s jazz faculty, all of whom have established reputations as players, composers, and/or bandleaders. They are trumpeter Terell Stafford, saxophonists Tim Warfield and Dick Oatts, pianist Bruce Barth, bassist Mike Boone, and drummer Justin Faulkner. The Philadelphian associated with the title track (which is also the longest) is McCoy Tyner. This is preceded by the opening track performance of Jimmy Heath’s “All Members.” The remaining two tracks are John Coltrane’s “Naima” and “Yes I Can, No You Can’t,” taken from Stafford’s tribute album for Lee Morgan, BrotherLee Love.

Since I was born in Mt. Sinai Hospital in South Philadelphia, I can feel a certain “geographical kinship” with the four jazzmen being honored on this album. (Mind you, since I was born in 1946, all four of them precede me by one or two decades!) Also, since I happened to be teaching at the University of Pennsylvania during the mid-Seventies, I had little awareness of what was happening in the Temple Music Department. (My own connection with the Penn Music Department amounted to expanding my knowledge of pre-Renaissance music, which included a summer workshop in paleography.)

The fact is that my knowledge of those four Philadelphians only began to emerge over the last two decades. Prior to that, my primary jazz focus was on Coltrane, who had brought his quartet to perform at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology not long after Tyner left and was replaced by Alice Coltrane. Fortunately, I now have a much broader scope that still affords considerable pleasure; and that pleasure now extends to this more recent assembly of jazzmen reflecting back on Philadelphia’s role in giving birth to many bold approaches to jazz improvisation.