Ravi Coltrane - Blending Times
Friday, February 27, 2009
Ravi Coltrane (ts), Luis Perdomo (p), Drew Gress (b), EJ Strickland (d) with guests Charlie Haden (b) and Brandee Young (hp). Rec. 2008Ravi Coltrane’s development as a musician, under the harsh glare of the world’s jazz media, has been one of measured strides rather than giant steps. Throughout, he has given evidence of consistent artistic growth, at its most apparent with 2005’s In Flux, widely acknowledged as his first mature statement as an artist. He has now moved some distance from that with Blending Times which includes five spontaneously conceived pieces alongside five compositions, including the now mandatory Monk tune.
On the free pieces, there is both order and method in his approach, including agreeing an outline of objectives and direction of travel beforehand. In many ways these pieces are closer to a time-no-changes approach to improvisation over which Coltrane experiments – largely successfully – with spontaneously conceived form. ‘Shine,’ which opens the album, is a composition by Perdomo that makes use of rubato, a technique seldom employed in jazz and heralds an album that is refreshingly open minded in both its conception and execution. The centrepiece, the Charlie Haden composition ‘For Turiya,’ originally recorded as a duet between Coltrane’s mother Alice and Haden in the 1970s and subsequently recorded by Haden with Jan Garbarek, is performed as a trio with Haden and Brandee Young on harp and neatly captures the mood of quiet beauty that Coltrane sustains throughout.
Stuart Nicholson
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