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Turtle Island String Quartet plays Coltrane and the Jacques Loussier Jazz Trio plays Bach

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"you rehearse until you're hitting everything on the head, and here comes a band like the Savoy Sultans, raggedy, fuzzy sounding, and they upset everything.'What am I doing here?' you wonder. But that's the way it is. That's jazz. If you get too clean, too precise. you don't swing sometimes, and the fun goes out of the music." - Trombonist Dicky Wells

Friday, 09 January 2009

Turtle Island String Quartet plays Coltrane and the Jacques Loussier Jazz Trio plays Bach

Written by Don Berryman

Thursday, 29 March 2007

Bach: The Brandenburgs

A Love Supreme: The Legacy Of John Coltrane is the Turtle Island String Quartet's tribute to the music of John Coltrane and Jacques Loussier explores the baroque with Bach: The Brandenburg, his interpretation of J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos - both on Telarc. Turnabout may be fair play, but these offerings are better than fair, one is quite nice and the other is splendid. None of this is really new, The Turtle Island String Quartet has been illuminating jazz for over 20 years, and Jacques Lossier has been reinterpreting Bach for at least 50.

"I am doing what I've always done, which is to explore this music, and -- while remaining respectful to Bach -- finding new, interesting and surprising things to say." - Jacques Lossier

Jacques Lossier and his trio tackle the Brandenburgs is not the first attempt to change instrumentation for this piece. In 1973 electronic music advocate, Wendy Carlos released Switched-On Brandenburgs played on Moog synthesizer. Loussier's trio takes the music into the more serious chamber jazz setting, much like the John Lewis' work with the Modern Jazz Quartet. All six concertos are presented here, adhering to Bach's original structure. Each movement is presented on a separate track ranging in length from a little under two minutes to a little over seven. With each, Bach's themes are stated clearly in each movement before breaking into improvisation. The statement of the familiar themes often seems slightly out of place with the drums and walking bass, but the logical flow into the improvisation usually pays off. Because it was written featuring a keyboard instrument (harpsichord), the 5th concerto seems the best suited to piano trio and seems the most cohesive performance on this album. Loussier's cool style is reminiscent of the late Vince Guaraldi and sounds light and airy.

Turtle Island Quartet by Jay Blakesberg

The Turtle Island Quartet featuring David Balakrishnan on violin, Evan Price on violin, Mads Tolling on viola, and Mark Summer on cello has ignored musical boundaries since their inception. For A Love Supreme: The Legacy Of John Coltrane, Turtle Island Quartet present a collection of pieces selected the breadth of material either composed by Coltrane, performed by Coltrane, or written as a tribute to Coltrane. Wonderfully arranged and performed, we are given a new perspective on the music of Coltrane by having it put in the warm and intimate context of a classical string quartet.

The CD opens with Coltrane's "Moments Notice" from Blue Trane, the slapping bows and walking bass give a familiar jazz combo feel while the violin solos. Next is "La Danse du Bonheur", written John McLaughlin and Lakshminarayana Shankar this celebrates Coltrane's connection to Indian music. "Model Trane" composed by the quartet themselves, is a modal piece following the same minimal 32 bar structure as Coltrane's "Impressions" --actually when I first listened to this before reading the track listing, I thought is was "Impressions" (which also the same structure as Miles Davis' "So What" that Coltrane originally and brilliantly explored on Kind Of Blue).

Coltrane's epic suite, "A Love Supreme" is the centerpiece of this collection. It is brilliantly arranged incorporating some of Coltrane's transcribed solos into the string arrangement. Monks "'Round Midnight", Coltrane's Countdown and Naima (Both from the breakthrough Giant Steps) , Chick Corea's "Song To John" and Miles Davis' "So What" fill out this CD.

Satisfying throughout, A Love Supreme: The Legacy Of John Coltrane give us another lens through which to view the genius of jazz legend John Coltrane.

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