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| Steve Coleman |
Oliver Ragsdale, the president of The
Carr Center, an arts hub in downtown Detroit, stated Monday night that alto
saxophonist Steve Coleman’s eleven-day
residency is the longest for a jazz musician in the Carr Center’s history.
Ragsdale was introducing Coleman to a near capacity audience eager to experience
Coleman and his current band Five Elements. The residency is an ambitious endeavor
for Coleman one of the most accomplished jazz modernist, having earned during
his three decade plus career the MacArthur genius grant, Doris Duke Artist
Award, and has recorded thirty-one jazz
albums as a leader. Coleman will conduct a series of workshops, outreach music
educational events, a jam session, and a second full-length concert with his quintet. Coleman, 60, is a native of Chicago.
Stylistically he has one foot planted in bop
and the other in free jazz. Monday night Coleman showed he possesses
more raw stamina than the average red-blooded American jazz alto saxophonist.
At this middle-age leg of his career, Coleman’s boyhood hero’s fellow Chicagoans
saxophonists Von Freeman and Bunky Green influences are still present in
Coleman’s blood. Coleman started his two-week run at the Carr with a marathon
set of jazz that straddled the fence of avant-garde jazz with his Five Elements
band trumpeter Johnathan Finlayson,
drummer Sean Rickman, guitarist Miles Okazaki
and bassist Anthony Tidd. Finlayson and Rickman are the linchpins. Neither has
a drop of inhibition in their blood.
The band opened with a five-alarm barn burning tune, clocking in just
under fifteen minutes. On it, Finlayson establishes
his worth immediately with a lengthy and purposeful solo. He’s right at home in
the middle register of the trumpet. On the
following selection, Coleman slowed things down, proving his band isn’t all piss
and vinegar.
The band played the slow jam with a puppy-love sort of innocence
you’d thing such a powerful jazz band
would have little interest in.
Immediately, after the slow jam concluded, the quintet dove into the
deep in end of their set-list, not bothering to resurface for air until the
concert ended. Coleman never addressed the audience or offered the titles of
the songs the band performed.
The band was too busy swinging and taking the audience to never before experienced
improvisational heights. Coleman didn’t talk to the audience until the end of
the concert finally introducing his band-mates. No one cared that Coleman
didn’t converse with the audience. The
music was hot, colorful, and breathtakingly original.
The band performed for
two straight hours, and neither member, as far as I could discern, broke a
sweat. Coleman is the kind of creative force and leader who demands much from his band, and they made rising to his
expectations look effortless.
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