Africa / Brass Édition Limitée Vinyle Rouge

Description

Just as he had only just launched his personal revolution by releasing a series of historic albums for Atlantic (“My Favorite Things”, “Plays the Blues”, “Coltrane’s Sound”) that literally blew apart the formal frameworks of dominant hard bop to propel modern jazz onto the path of modality, saxophonist John Coltrane inaugurated his new contract with the young Impulse label by recording in 1961 “Africa Brass”, an album as ambitious as it is experimental, pushing even further the sensualist and expressionist character of his music. Plunging his organic quartet, driven by Elvin Jones’s abundant polyrhythms, into the sonic enchantment of a vast ensemble of 21 musicians with an unusual and luxuriant orchestration magnificently deployed by the arrangements of Eric Dolphy and McCoy Tyner, Coltrane projects the exceptional lyrical intensity of his singing into a fascinating network of abstract textures and vivid colors, offering the long and complex spiraled “sound sheets” of his saxophone playing a setting that is as stimulating as it is powerfully poetic. The saxophonist would not continue in this orchestral direction, choosing instead to develop the inimitable modal signature of his style through the archetypal quartet format, and “Africa Brass” would remain forever in his prolific discography as a kind of enchanted interlude with undiminished fascination.