Jazz Archives

Penguin's guide to jazz on CD correctly notes that Freeman was among the first of the avant-garde-leaning players who followed the "New Thing" wave of the '60s to fully embrace the need for tradition and structure. He was -- and remains -- fully capable of pushing the limits of his instrument , particularly on bass clarinet and tenor, but he's also a highly lyrical player and a superb interpreter of ballads. These qualities are strongly displayed in "Spirit Sensitive."
I have the original vinyl, which included six cuts, but I sprung for the CD reissue in order to get the four extra cuts, and it was worth it, particularly for two Coltrane originals Freeman performs (more on those in a minute.)
The album was recorded in 1979 when Freeman was in his 20s, so it's all the more surprising how gentle the sound on this release is, particularly if you are familiar with some of his fiery work from around this period with bassist Cecil McBee (who also appears here.)
From the opening "Autumn in New York" through "You Don't Have to Say You're Sorry," "It Never Entered My Mind," "Close to You Alone" and a superb reading of Horace Silver's "Peace," Freeman renders his material with care, staying close to melody and mood rather than technical showmanship.
Freeman best shows his power on interpretations of two Coltrane tunes, "Lonnie's Lament" and "Wise One." These were two of Coltrane's most introspective compositions and Chico retains their dark colors, but on "Lonnie's Lament," he turns loose on saxophone in a way that Coltrane himself did not on the original. It's a spirited and spirit-filled performance.
John Hicks' piano is a strong plus on "Spirit Sensitive," particularly on the ballads. His lyricism matches Freeman's and he is an attentive accompanist.
The half-star deduction comes about from the drumming. Billy Hart is obviously a fine drummer, but he didn't sound to me in top form on this album. Specifically, he plays a bit "busy" on the ballads; the two-song sequence of "Close to You Alone" and "It Never Entered My Mind" features superb interplay between Freeman and Hicks, but Billy fills up a lot of the space with more work than I thought was necessary, and it gets a little intrusive. By contrast, Don Moye appears on the last two cuts and fares much better, in my opinion, with molding his sound to the rest of the band's.
Although he is a restless spirit who occasionally records a date that doesn't quite connect, Freeman has continued to turn out fine work since this date. "Spirit Sensitive" is an important document of the development of a key modern jazz player.

:::Review by Tyler Smith:::

Chico Freeman - Spirit Sensitive (1979)

1. Autumn In New York 4:15
2. Peace 5:38
3. A Child Is Born 7:41
4. Lonnie's Lament 7:23
5. You Don't Have To Say You're Sorry 4:19
6. Wise One 6:59
7. It Never Entered My Mind 6:19
8. Close Tou You Alone 8:50
9. Carnival 7:35
10. Don't Get Around Much Anymore 4:19

Credits
Bass – Cecil McBee
Drums – Billy Hart, Don Moye (tracks: 9, 10)
Piano – John Hicks
Tenor Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone – Chico Freeman
Vibraphone – Jay Hoggard (tracks: 9)

A warmly sustained and lightly distorted guitar dances fluidly over a modally-inflected, jazzy, piano-bass-drums rhythm section. On the surface, for a few moments, it seems a familiar sound, common to the last 3 decades of electric jazz. Something is truly different here, though. The notes and intervals are somehow different - flying by in patterns that don't seem to equate with any of the normal guitar fingering patterns and the rhythm breathes in some different way that is beyond swinging. Clouds and torrents of lightening-fast notes are just slightly slurred or bent to odd, microtonal intervals that are both different and somehow exactly right for the heavenly musical continuum that they inhabit. The longer you listen - the more you realize that this is something unique; both so familiar and so different at the same time, that you know you had better take some time to figure out what's going on.
There are, perhaps, a handful of guitarists who have particularly taken both musical and spiritual inspiration from the work of the great jazz saxophonist John Coltrane to create their own truly unique musical expressions. The better-known among these are Carlos Santana, John McLaughlin, Sonny Sharrock, Allan Holdsworth and Sonny Greenwich. All of these players are known for their individuality, strong personal tone, vibrant improvisational style, technical mastery, and music of spiritual depth. A lesser-known figure, Tisziji Munoz, certainly stands shoulder to shoulder on all these levels with his more famous colleagues. Certainly he sounds like a "Coltrane Guitarist," but he's taken the approach to some new and unprecedented level: both "in" and "out" of the tradition at the same time..
Tisziji's music, as documented on 6 CDs and several cassette releases from his own Anami Music label (P.O. Box 712, Schenectady, NY 12301), is a fiery and multi-colored testimony of unique personal expression. Tisziji's electric guitar navigates through many jazz standards and originals to explore spaces outside the usual confines of the jazz idiom. With such collaborators as Pharoah Sanders, Rashid Ali, Bob Moses, Paul Shaffer, Dave Liebman, Nick Brignola, Bernie Senesky and Don Pate, he has produced some of the most striking and original electric jazz of the past fifteen years. The question is: how can such a great player be virtually unknown? The answers to this question lie in the story of Tisziji's life, which is as surprising and unique as the music it has produced.
Although I suspect that Tisziji considers his life to be one seamless whole, an outsider might note that in addition to his musical career he is also fully occupied as a spiritual teacher-guide and author with over fifty published books of metaphysical-esoteric knowledge to his credit. Over the years he has seriously studied all the major world religions and has been a practitioner of several forms of Yoga and Tibetan Buddhism He has developed his own system of astrology which he calls Time-Mastery. These life experiences, as much as his musical history, have lead Tisziji to his unique approaches to music and guitar.
Tisziji was born in Brooklyn, New York on July 15, 1946. At age 3 he received his first set of drums and began to master the traditional Afro-Cuban rhythms.
In 1968, serving as drummer in the 440th U.S. Army band, he began to teach himself to play guitar studying jazz and jazz harmony. After Tisziji left the army in 1969 he lived in Canada and New York City. In the latter 70's he met and began to work with Pharoah Sanders, in whose band he played for six years. Soon he stopped listening to other guitar players and music in general and continued to develop his own personal style. In 1978 he recorded his first album for the India Navigation label: RENDEZVOUS WITH NOW. Moving to Schenectady in 1984, he settled in relative seclusion and rarely performs. Still, he continues to record and release many fine albums.
As a totally self-taught player he depends on feeling, intuition, freedom and capability to guide his musical choices. Make no mistake- despite severing the artery in his left wrist, resulting in a lifelong painful ordeal with chronic nerve damage - he operates at very high technical level - it's just that it's
his own level and not so much based on technical models as most players to produce music of great melodic and harmonic richness. His non-musical activities allow little time for practice and he rarely gets a chance to play. But when he does he makes every note count in a process of continual musical discovery.
The equipment favored by Munoz on his newly released, DEATH IS A FRIEND OF MINE is a Fender D'Aquisto Jazz Guitar strung with D'Addario half-wound, light jazz strings; played through a Mesa Boogie Mark II or Peavey Bandit amps. He picks with a metal pick and despite eschewing outboard effects pedals and devices he produces a vocal, singing tone that many great players, even with refrigerator-sized racks, fall far short of. Perhaps, since the foundation of Tisziji's music rests, as he says, "upon the freedom to explore the many levels of human spirituality and reality for each musician in their own individual way," he somehow transcends the simple technical facts of guitar technique and equipment to create music which is beyond the experience of limits of conventional musical education and technique.

Guitar Player Magazine, 1998.

:::Review by Henry Kaiser:::

Tisziji Muñoz - Rendezvous With Now (1978)

A1. The Shepherds Chant 21:51
B1. Blessings 4:06
B2. The Word Of God Chant 5:37
B3. Waiting For Now To Be Forever 6:36

Credits
Bass - Cecil McBee
Drums - Claude Ranger
Guitar, Percussion, Vocals - Muñoz
Piano - Bernie Senensky

Grachan Moncur III was one of the top trombonists of the jazz avant-garde in the 1960s although he had only a few chances to lead his own record sessions. This 1964 set (which has been reissued on CD) was one of his finest, a quintet outing with bassist Cecil McBee, two of the members of the Miles Davis Quintet (pianist Herbie Hancock and drummer Tony Williams), and tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter just a brief time before he joined Miles. The group performs four of Moncur's challenging originals, including "Nomadic" (which is largely a drum solo) and "The Twins," which is built off of one chord. None of the compositions caught on but the strong and very individual improvising of the young musicians is enough of a reason to acquire the advanced music.

:::Review by Scott Yanow:::

Grachan Moncur III - Some Other Stuff (1964)

1.Gnostic (11:42)
2. Thandiwa (8:17)
3. The Twins (12:53)
4. Nomadic (7:41)

Credits
Bass - Cecil McBee
Drums - Anthony Williams
Engineer - Rudy Van Gelder
Piano - Herbie Hancock
Producer - Alfred Lion
Saxophone [Tenor] - Wayne Shorter
Trombone - Grachan Moncur III

In a genre full of tragically short-lived performers, Woody Shaw's story is exceptionally tragic. Legally blind and beset with emotional problems, he was killed in a subway accident in 1989 without ever attaining the recognition attentive listeners knew he deserved. The Mosaic box set of his Columbia recordings a few years ago placed him in a linear development of trumpet players between Hubbard and Marsalis; this was, no doubt, a highly questionable analysis (mainly because it left out Miles Davis altogether), but it indicated the high regard and influence Shaw has had — or should have had — over other trumpet players.

The Moontrane, recorded in late 1974, was Shaw's breakthrough album. It is aptly named, for although Shaw was during his lifetime routinely (and with relative inaccuracy) compared to Hubbard, he sounds more like John Coltrane. Now to replicate Coltrane's lightning runs and dense harmonic lines on trumpet is no mean feat; Shaw not only does it repeatedly, but with impeccable precision and taste. The Moontrane sports the Coltrane-ish tenor and soprano man Azar Lawrence, who was also part of McCoy Tyner's Coltrane-ish modal recordings of the early Seventies.
"Sanyas," by a young Steve Turre, who is also part of Shaw's basic quartet, is a modal workout with some intense soprano work by Lawrence, recalling the reedy Eastern feel of many of Coltrane's soprano recordings. Shaw is simply stunning here, with long clean lines to take the breath away. Then comes pianist Onaje Allen Gumbs, a Shaw favorite, playing unplugged on this track a first-rate McCoy Tyner impersonation. Cecil McBee plays bass on three tracks, Buster Williams on two. (There are also two alternates, both featuring McBee.) Victor Lewis on drums keeps things going, but doesn't light any fires. Percussionists Tony Waters and Guilherme Franco join in here and there.
"The Moontrane" became Shaw's signature tune. Here it gets a straightforward reading enlivened by the sterling trumpet of the master himself. "Tapscott's Blues" is more passionate, with Lawrence and Shaw vying intriguingly for Best Post-Coltrane Solo honors. Turre sounds throughout the disc a little less developed than the trombonist he has subsequently become, but that doesn't mean he doesn't hold up his end. Actually, as the only one of the frontmen not to be deeply influenced by the Coltrane Quartet, he adds piquancy to the sound.
"Katrina Ballerina" is a boppish tune with more stunning work from Shaw, whose fluency in the trumpet's lower register is just as striking as his speed.
Gumbs shines on his own "Are They Only Dreams," as does Turre on the opening sections of his "Sanyas." Shaw himself penned "The Moontrane" and "Katrina Ballerina," putting him in the group of great jazz performers who could write their own great tunes. Alas that he didn't write more.

:::Review by Robert Spencer:::

Woody Shaw - The Moontrane (1975)

1. The Moontrane (6:54)
2. Sanyas (13:05)
3. Tapscott´s Blues (6:41)
4. Katrina Ballerina (7:36)
5. Are They Only Dreams (9:12)
6. Tapscott´s Blues (Alt.) (6:50)
7. Katrina Ballerina (Alt.) (8:01)

Credits
Artwork By [Graphic Design] - Nancy Dwyer , Page Simon
Bass - Buster Williams (tracks: 1, 5) , Cecil McBee (tracks: 2 to 4, 6, 7)
Congas - Tony Waters (tracks: 2, 4, 5, 7)
Drums - Victor Lewis
Electric Piano - Onaje Allen Gumbs
Engineer - Eddie Korvin , Jan Rathburn
Mastered By - Gene Paul
Other [Production Coordinator] - Michael Weiner
Percussion - Guilherme Franco (tracks: 2, 4, 5, 7)
Photography [Photo Illustrations] - Oliver Wasow
Piano - Onaje Allen Gumbs
Producer - Michael Cuscuna
Producer [Series Produced By] - Joel Dorn
Saxophone [Soprano] - Azar Lawrence
Saxophone [Tenor] - Azar Lawrence
Trombone - Steve Turre
Trumpet - Woody Shaw