SAX BOMB
triptych Tim Abrahamspharaoh sandersliquid rooms, Edinburgh
HHHH Depending on your viewpoint, the late 1960s was either the golden era of jazz or the beginning of the end. The electrical innovations of Miles Davis or the afro-futurism of Sun Ra may be the plundering ground of today's jazzer but they remain a no-go zone for the older fan who still looks at Kind Of Blue as a line drawn in the sand beyond which they will not venture.
Tonight Pharaoh Sanders, an artist who made his name by transgressing the traditional forms of jazz, reminds an audience from both camps that these delineations ultimately make little difference. You either like the jazz aesthetic or you don't. And obviously he cannot reproduce the multi-layered orchestral sound of the records DJ Gilles Peterson has made his name by playing, as he can only cram a quartet onstage.
To a generation who discovered the township rhythms of Sanders's late 1960s and early 1970s work, it is something of a shock. The older generation, meanwhile, welcome a version of My Favourite Things which tops, in innovation and in length, those Sanders performed with John Coltrane.
Ultimately, however, there is something for both sides. Not only does Sanders explore the outer reaches of the saxophone's register, as he always has, but proves his genre's ultimate flexibility. Passing through the sophisticated cosmopolitan drive of the late 1950s to the gentle wash of the 1960s stuff, his quartet go on to flashes of everything that has come since. It is a riveting history lesson.
Copyright 2002
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