Search - Anthony Davis :: Of Blues and Dreams

An early landmark

greg taylor | Portland, Oregon United States | 11/25/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is part of a series of releases on CD (The Creative Improvised Music Classics) of early 70s free jazz recordings on the great independent Canadian label, Sackville Recordings. Let's just start off by saying that all of the releases are worth checking out.
This particular outing led by Anthony Davis is typical of the quality of this series. This record includes the great title tune played solo by Davis and the Suite for Another World and Estraven as a quartet with Davis joined by Leroy Jenkins on the violin, Abdul Wadud on the cello and Pheeroan ak Laff on the drums. The sessions were recorded in late July of 1978.
The piano solo is a wonder that leaves me very much hungry for more. Davis is part of that jazz mainstream that has absorbed the lessons of modern classical music as well as jazz and made it all part of his idiom. I think of Cecil Taylor, Andrew Hill, George Graewe and others as all having found different ways to do this. In Davis case, the result is spacious music that sounds at times bluesy and soulful, at times fragmented and rhythmically jagged and both thoroughly composed and improvised. What makes that especially interesting is to my ears the contrast between his solo style and his group playing.
The rest of the CD displays that difference in an equally brilliant manner.
Leroy Jenkins is the original violinist of free jazz. By the time of this recording he had already been in the Creative Construction Company and the Revolutionary Ensemble. He brings to the proceedings his own compositional sensibilities and his unique tone. The combination of Jenkins and Wadud is a potent one. They are show their range on Madame Xola where at one point they sound like something out of Elliot Carter and later sound like Stephan Grappelli.
This piece as well as the whole CD shows off Davis exercising early chops as a composer that would only get stronger and stronger. The fact that it also highlights his improvisational abilities makes it special. Kudos to the folks at Sackville for making this music available to us again."