INTERVIEW WITH BARNES AND NOBLE ON THE GATHERING OF SPIRITS
AUGUST 2004

Dave Liebman, Joe Lovano, and Michael Brecker are three of the most accomplished and respected saxophonists of their generation. Each has a style as identifiable as a fingerprint, but what unites this trio of virtuosos is their love for the music of John Coltrane. The influence of that musical icon is made explicit on Saxophone Summit, which brings Liebman, Lovano, and Brecker together in inspired collaboration. Liebman spoke to Ted Panken about their creative cohesion and the Coltrane connection.

Barnes & Noble.com: When we think of tenors together, we think of head arrangements, riffs, unisons, solos, solos, 32s, 16s, and so on. This isn’t like that. It’s more of a collective improv concept.

Dave Liebman: In a way, the first few gigs, I feel, were kind of like three quartets on the stage with some interaction. But I think it was a performance we did of Coltrane’s Meditations that really launched off the idea of going back to what we really all started in, which was the loft scene in the ‘60s, when we all played that way -- especially Michael and myself. I mean, we were living in the same place. That group playing à la Ascension, late Trane, was a model that we all kind of grew up on, especially myself and Michael -- Billy [Hart], of course, too. So wanting to bring that spirit in, we decided let’s have more of that rather than less. That’s how you get the idea of the group playing, and it’s something that makes it different than the normal saxophone meeting, and certainly different from the historical thing.

B&N.com: But Coltrane is there for each of you in different degrees. And it’s 35 years since he’s gone, longer than Charlie Parker was gone when you were starting out. So talk about how Coltrane continues to inflect the sound of contemporary improvisation.

DL: First of all, aside from the amazing musical influence, it’s the music that he made in all the years, but especially the quartet and into the late Trane period.… It’s just such a pinnacle of light, of spiritual unity and of just really high feelings. Whatever we can say feels spiritual in jazz, I mean, it’s all spiritual, but this is just blatantly that way, and the quest that he was on, and the search, and the way that quartet related to each other, it’s just a model for everybody. Certainly for me and obviously for the other guys. It’s something that you look up to.… It’s like the classical composers are always looking to Bach as being the ultimate, supreme composer; any time you read anybody’s biography, they’re always saying, “Bach, Bach, Bach, Mozart, Bach,” that kind of thing. In our case, Coltrane is our model.

B&N.com: Let’s pinpoint what area of Coltrane you hear Joe coming out of, Michael, and yourself.

DL: There are no clear-cut lines. But in a certain way, early, middle, and late Trane. Joe is a seasoned bebop player coming out of the tradition more than the two of us, in a deep way, because he grew up with it in his family. His father played, and he was surrounded by swing and bebop when he was a young cat, and he also has an Ornette influence, a free influence. But from the Coltrane standpoint, it’s really chord changes and Giant Steps -- I would say early Trane. Michael really reflects the Quartet. He has a lot of that stuff down, the patterns, the things that Coltrane put on the map as a saxophone player that are now de rigueur -- you must know those. My interest is and has been the late Trane, in the sense that I feel it’s been the most underplayed of all the stages of Coltrane, the least understood, and kind of relegated to a back position, which I always feel is not a fair assessment of his work. I think the late stuff is amazing, especially Coltrane’s playing, and from the spiritual standpoint, it’s really the pinnacle of all of Coltrane’s work to my ears. So I like that stuff, and that’s kind of where I come in.

B&N.com: Talk about how Coltrane evolved instrumentally in terms of what he was doing with the horn? Do you see his path as a constant evolution?

DL: Well, being such an obsessive practicer, and also having the opportunity to play every night for 40-45 weeks a year for years on end, which was the case in those days, he developed everything very methodically, in a very evolving and flowing way. What he was doing one month, four months later you could see how it had developed. I remember that from seeing him live. When he worked on trills, when he worked on tremolos, when he worked on the altissimo, when he worked on going from high to low, when he worked on certain things that were unique to soprano -- they were things that you heard him doing, and then you’d see him 3 or 4 months later (as was the way in New York in those days, because he’d return), and you’d see that that had evolved in something else or had been put not aside but put in the back, and now something else had taken its place. So in his case, all the developments, saxophone-speaking, were really gradual, but packed into a 10-year period. When you look at Coltrane, it’s really basically ’57 to ‘67. And we’re still all trying to absorb one-tenth of that.

B&N.com: And it brings up the point that you guys are all at least 10 years older than Coltrane was when he died, and you’re still finding new sources of fascination in the music. I assume it doesn’t get old for you.

DL: No. Because when you speak about Coltrane, it’s such a reservoir, if you play his left pinky, you have just possibly gotten something. The guy was unbelievable, what he did. So if we just do that, it would be enough. But because of what I mentioned earlier, the interest that we all have individually, in our own careers, and that we’ve traversed over the last 30 years and will traverse, I think will find its way into the music. I think this is going to be an ongoing thing. Obviously, not steady. But when we do get together, I can see that 5 or 10 years from now (I’m being optimistic, but I’m sure I’m looking at it the way it will be), there will be yet different influences, because of what we’re hearing and doing.

B&N.com: Are there plans for a second record?

DL: I have plans! I have an exact idea of what I want to do. I would like it to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Coltrane’s death, in 2007. I would like to do all the ballads. Now we have 6 or 7 good ballads -- “Dear Lord,” “After the Rain,” “Peace on Earth,” “Ogunde” from Expression. I would like to do the ballads, separated by free solos in between, as a suite. Six ballads, with in between Joe gets his spot, in between I get my spot, in between Billy gets his spot, blah-blah-blah. A very free record, separated by these incredibly lyrical ballads that are just so beautiful and so tonally based, but in between we play more freely. That’s what I’m envisioning.

 

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