John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy – Evenings at the Village Gate (Impulse!, 2023)

Since the end of the 1990s, with music lovers becoming more open minded like they were possibly in the 1960s and the following decade, Coltrane was again a pivotal figure for all the rock and alt rock aficionados who wanted to become aware of other styles of music, as jazz for example. That’s why there was a huge amount of new releases, mostly live albums.

Many of them were exceptional as far as material but poor in terms of recordings, like as an example the live at the Olatunji Center For African Culture (Impulse!, 2000) with Trane’s last quintet featuring Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane. But others were incredibly good: take for instance the double album Live at The Half Note (Impulse!, 2005), with recordings from a radio broadcast of Coltrane’s classic quartet, or again the recording of the entire A Love Supreme suite included in the deluxe edition of the album (Impulse!, 2002) from a Juan-Les-Pins festival, or the recordings with Thelonius Monk (Blue Note, 2005).

All of this material helped people to keep the flame of Coltrane’s music alive and well. In these last years new original material has seen the light of day. The two entire studio records, Both Directions at Once, issued in 2018 and featuring material recorded in 1963, the other studio album Blue World, issued in 2019 but recorded in 1964 and with material dedicated to a soundtrack for a movie titled Le Chat Dans Le Sac by Gilles Groulx, and finally another live version of A Love Supreme recorded at a Seattle’s jazz club in 1965 and issued in 2021.

Now’s the time for this Evening At The Village Gate, recorded live with a single microphone in 1961 just a few times after the recording of Olé Coltrane, featuring the same personnel: Coltrane aside, there are the unforgotten genius of Eric Dolphy, the rhythm section offered by Elvin Jones and Reggie Workman, and McCoy Tyner’s piano. The album, even if in mono, is extraordinary and exquisite as far as the music comprised herein, end it will be possibly one of the albums of the year 2023.

Recorded originally by Rich Alderson the afternoon of a lazy August day only in order to understand if the acoustic of the club was enough good for the night shows, the tapes were lost for many years and finally recovered for the New York Library for Performing Arts. Last July, they were released by Impulse! as a single CD or a double vynil, and are finally available for all of you passionate listeners.

The first track in an incomplete, but beautiful in its almost 16 minutes lenght, My Favorite Things, one of Coltrane most successful compositions reworked and reimagined over and over throughout his entire career where Dolphy and its flute dominate for the first 7 minutes, thanks to an angular and graspy voice exploring both the severe and sharp tones of the instrument, over the propelling circular drums by Elvin Jones, Reggie Workman’s walking bass and McCoy Tyner’s voicings.

When it’s time for Trane to take place, he exploits his typical churning tone at soprano saxophone, that set of techniques that will inspire people like Evan Parker in the following decades. Overacute tones, almost binaural sounds, hints to the melody of the song interspersed with raucous and furious yells, all the arsenal that made some critic write the word ‘anti-jazz’ – we’ll see. But Trane is more than that: from the minute 11 he is able to embellish the melody of the song in a logical and consequential way, again abrasive but far from being an anarchist’s shout.

When Lighs Are Low is another classic tune shaped originally by Benny Carter and Spencer Williams in 1936 and that was subsequently interpreted by the likes of Chet Baker and Miles Davis. This version, again, start with a beautiful, almost cubist solo by Dolphy at bass clarinet, an instrument played in his high register this way only by Dolphy itself and few others trying to imitate him.

Those of you who are familiar with Dolphy’s language through Mingus’ live records will be happy to hear such a soloing in this version of a song played by the Coltrane quartet, since many critics in the past, starting from the studio albums in which the two were collaborating, asserted that Trane and Dolphy collaboration was sometimes harsh and difficult for both, since the melodic and harmonic idea of music by Coltrane was not completely malleable for a musician with the harmonic conceptions of Dolphy.

In this piece, instead, we can hear Dolphy playing at ease and at will for more than seven minutes, before leaving space to his pal and his soprano until minute 10, where the soloing is left to a bluesy and dense McCoy Tyner until the end of the song before a brief assertion by Dolphy again. The following Impressions is almost classical in its proceeding and sees Dolphy as a perfect partner for Coltrane, whose solo is developing lavishly and more consistent, which is so difficult to obtain at the same time, than the studio version.

Dolphy, again at the bass clarinet, shows us that idea of angularity typical of his concept of harmonic leap, even larger than that of Charlie Parker, that made him become famous and peculiar as a musician. The more than 16 minutes for Greensleeves open a song that, far from the original timing on the Africa/Brass album with the Dolphy/Tyner orchestrations, shows us, here, all its potential. Melodic as many of Trane’s material of choice, it becomes a true tour de force for all the musicians involved.

Finally, the most intriguing live execution of the record: Africa, a piece recorded originally for the album Africa/Brass with orchestrations by Eric Dolphy following McCoy Tyner’s piano voicings, with the two horns proceeding at the same time is that manner that was defined ‘speaking in tongues’ by the fans and critics following Albert Ayler and his brother Don in the same years, that means that every horn is proceeding speaking his own thing before taking time for a solo.

The more than 20 minutes of the composition are possibly some of those Steve Reich was referring to during the years as an inspiration for his works as a minimalist, and so they are an important document for all the people who want to understand better the many links between different styles of music such as jazz and contemporary classical.

Far from being a mere exhibition for the two horns, Africa features a beautiful exchange between Reggie Workman and Art Davis on bass: the first exploring the rhythm, the other expressing a pedal that is reminiscent of ancient African music. Those were, in effect, the days when Coltrane was exploring the music of India and Africa from a composer’s point of view, establishing also a significant friendship with musicians such as Ravi Shankar – Ravi will also be the name of one of Coltrane’s sons.

Few months later, John Tynan in Downbeat will review Coltrane and Dolphy’s music coining the label of ‘anti-jazz’. Coltrane and Dolphy will stick up for their music from the columns of the magazine in an interesting article available online and titled John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy Answer to Jazz Critics. An advised reading for you all, since if now we can taken Trane and Dolphy music for art, the path to that consciousness was not linear and it deserves to be deepened in full.