Steve Coleman and Five Elements: Poly Tropos/Of Many Turns

Editor's Choice

Rating: ★★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Jonathan Finlayson (t)
Sean Rickman (d)
Rich Brown (el b)
Steve Coleman (as)

Label:

Pi Recordings

December/2024

Media Format:

2 CD, DL

Catalogue Number:

PIRC105.2

RecordDate:

Rec. 2023

Although he has made a string of notable studio recordings over a four-decade career, Steve Coleman scales creative heights on stage. This third live album in six years – following two volumes recorded at the Village Vanguard – also shows the value of both established and nascent musical relationships.

Drummer Sean Rickman and trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson are longstanding members of Coleman’s Five Elements but bassist Rich Brown is a recent arrival following the departure of Anthony Tidd. The band’s language is instantly recognizable, though the newbie’s attack and tone, which is sometimes lighter and springier than that of his predecessor, are notable.

But the central premise of Coleman’s writing, an ability to retain an element of dance within cyclical complexity, to tightly entwine rhythm and melody, is intact and consolidated. For all his pushing of James Brown’s funky intricacy into a kind of pinpoint Afro-Asian metric slalom Coleman, whose phrasing is as burrowing and fluid as ever, shows how standards, ballads at that, are an integral part of his creative outlook.

The version of Billy Strayhorn’s ‘Lush Life’ is quite something for the way the saxophonist’s unaccompanied chorus captures the world weariness of the lyric before the piece organically morphs into a punishingly heavy groove that maintains the energy raised elsewhere. To paraphrase the title of the album, there are ‘many turns’ of the wheels in Coleman’s mind, which show little sign of stopping any time soon.

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