sam rivers | streams & the quest
STREAMS (Impulse AS-9251)
Sam Rivers / tenor and soprano saxophone, flute, piano, Cecil McBee / bass, Norman Connors / drums and gongs.
Recorded: July 6, 1973 at the Montreux Jazz Festival.
THE QUEST (Pausa PR-7015)
Sam Rivers / tenor and soprano saxophone, flute, piano, Dave Holland / bass, Barry Altschul / percussion.
Recorded: March 12, 13, 1976.
There was a point, immediately following the release of Streams, when it seemed like Sam Rivers might be the one to fill the musical gap left by John Coltrane. His robust, no-nonsense, gruff but lyrical tenor style was like a light shining in an old darkness, a light whose brilliance had dimmed since Trane’s premature passing. It was, admittedly, a lot to expect from anyone (to fill that gap), but I mention it because for me Rivers’ music was always so close to being just that force, and yet… and yet, something never quite jelled.
Barry Altschul and Dave Holland
I heard Rivers perform on several occasions at San Francisco’s Keystone Korner from the mid to late ’70s. I held off reviewing his performances because he was unable to bring his regular accompanists with him, and in music such as his - created entirely spontaneously - I felt that might have been a severe hindrance. But even later, when Altschul and Holland showed up to take part in Rivers’ musical rituals, something was lacking. It’s simply that the music was never concentrated enough to move into that realm where, like Coltrane’s music, it might truly have shaken heaven and earth.
The format was always predictable for one thing: Rivers playing in turn each of his four instruments, interspersed with his own jazz vocalese. Yet that wouldn’t have been cause for complaint had the music been able to sustain for the hour-and-a-half length and longer of his sets. As it was, there were often brilliant statements. I remember one 35-minute soprano saxophone solo that alternately twisted, cried, shouted, and stopped, then slithered off like a snake through the surrounding rhythm. But there were equally intolerable moments: flute seeming to go nowhere forever, stuttered piano poundings and, above all, a rhythm team that all too often kept following in Rivers’ footsteps rather than creating their own music alongside his - which, to me, is the whole point of improvisation and particularly of the spontaneous, un-pre-structured variety that Rivers’ trios sought to enter into.
Norman Connors and Cecil McBee
These records, Streams and The Quest, are fully representative of this music, yet are slightly different documents. Certainly the form of the music is there, and the feeling. And I’m especially drawn to Rivers’ tenor playing, particularly on Streams. Also, all of his work (like the sound of his flute) is bright, in a dark sense, and absorbing. But the difference is that these are more completed statements overall, even in a textural sense, than any of Rivers’ music I heard performed live (even though Streams, of course, is a live recording).
The problem is that in hearing Rivers’ groups in person there was never the feeling for me that everything had worked or had had some necessity of relation; or never a full emotional satisfaction, to take it out of the area of technique, even though there were always memorable moments. And so the disappointment is that with all of the potential of Rivers’ music and all of the musical implications of where it might have gone (or could still go), so far the promise remains in part unfulfilled.
Henry Kuntz, 1982, previously unpublished.
Posted:
Sunday, April 1st, 2007, 16:21.
Filed under: bells.
| 239 Views.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Leave a comment | Trackback.
Loading ...