Although the substantial body of work that Ware amassed in the latter part of his life more than suffices to secure his place in the pantheon of contemporary saxophone giants, this excellent debut, enriched by a bonus disc of previously unreleased material from the original Birth Of A Being session, provides a rich portrait of a lavishly gifted young man with a horn. Twenty-eight at the time, he already has the tonal authority and articulation of a considerably older player, meaning that his big, bulbous, buzz-saw sound has an attack that picks up from where the likes of Gato Barbieri left off in his memorable late 1960s jousting with Don Cherry and Abdullah Ibrahim. The pared down nature of the instrumentation – a bass-less trio comprising drummer Marc Edwards and pianist Cooper-Moore – is such that Ware has nowhere to hide in any case, and while the sheer weightiness of his sound covers the low register more than adequately there is a gymnastic agility in his quicksilver ascending runs that complements the explosiveness of his partners. Though Ware was perceived first and foremost as an avant-garde artist, a term for which, he told me emphatically, he cared little, there is a convincing argument that can be made to recast him as a progressive gospel player. At times Ware extends the line from church horn men such as Vernard Johnson to Albert Ayler, unleashing the kind of ecstatic heat that bound the performances of those two trailblazers. And when Ware plays solo on the second disc, he hits a peak of sensual melancholy that would melt the hardest of hearts.