R.I.P. the great McCoy Tyner, who's passed away at the age of 81. Perhaps easy to forget how transformative that first encounter with his work could be, easily overshadowed in context as it is by the 'sideman' role that he took within the Coltrane quartet; but it shouldn't go unstated just how integral his vital and innovative piano sound was to the quartet, the lightning runs of the right hand, their speed dizzying and dazzling and hard to believe, that characteristic rolling trill as chiming accent or endpoint to ascending-descending melodic steps, and, perhaps even more than this, that left-hand rolling out thunder, the chordal, rhythmic anchor, pounded out so loud you'd think the stereo might break, the piano shake, the walls of Jericho fall down: this the inexorable and committed foundation to Coltrane's flights, a key component of all the dimensions that music opened and still opens. Hank Shteamer says it well here, with succinctly astute observations on jazz as a 'band music'. But the Coltrane quarter was not, of course, all: after and even before leaving Coltrane, Tyner made some wonderful recordings on Blue Note, my favourites those from the late 1960s: the under-sung Expansions (1968) with a double-horn line-up of Wayne Shorter and Gary Bartz; the almost identically-named Extensions (1970), a really stupendous record with that line-up supplemented by Alice Coltrane on harp; Cosmos (1969), featuring some tracks with string quartet that can be interestingly compared to Andrew Hill's recordings with a similar configuration around the same time (the two obviously extremely different as pianists, in terms of sound, spacing, timing, everything!). Into to the 70s, and after a dry period in which Tyner had to drive a cab to make ends meet, he signed with Milestone and recorded two of his best records: the underrated Song for My Lady (1972), with Mtume's bubbling percussion and Michael White's violin adding poise and stratospheric squal over one of those classic Tyner bass grooves on the opening 'Native Song', 'The Night has a Thousand Eyes' reinvented in classically thunderous Tyner fashion, 'A Silent Tear' the expected Tyner ballad, all gravity and grace, storm and sun; and the expansive Sahara from the same year, with a condensed version of the same band (who can also be seen in the live performance above, recorded off the TV show Soul), Sonny Fortune absolutely wailing on soprano, Tyner on one track playing koto...
On these records, Tyner was interested in expanding the palette of the music beyond the usual jazz quartet format, with bits of extra percussion, extra horns and percussion, the string quartet, Ron Carter on cello, string sections, wind sections, groups in all sizes from medium, chamber-music style ensembles to much larger big bands, the latter imparting a movie-music style grandeur on albums like Fly with the Wind and Song of the New World. Some of the most texturally interesting work happens on Asante, where guitar and voices thicken out the music, all topped off with the chunky undercurrent of Mtume's congas (around the time he joined Miles Davis' heaviest electric ensemble). None of this ever sounds quite like the fusion then popular -- as heavy as any fusion band, Tyner never really enters into rock territory, experimenting with instrumentation but essentially taking a piano style and an overall musical conception that was established by the early 1960s and engraving its edges with textural variety. Into the '70s and '80s, that established style seemed to get if anything, thicker, heavier, more grandiose, propelling forward those big bands, quartets and the like -- even if '70s recording biases meant that too often the group (particularly drums) would sound boxy (hence perhaps the best recordings are live: Atlantis, The Greeting). Tyner's albums and tunes never seemed to need more than one word to convey those qualities that his music embodied -- a rooted searching, a resolved quest: Expansions, Extensions, Cosmos -- and have a unique combination of high energy, propulsive excitement and an underlying hopefulness, a genuine calm. On solo performances, particularly ballads, Tyner could be floridly romantic: his solo work, beginning with Echoes of a Friend (1972), one of a number of tributes to Coltrane, is an under-appreciated aspect of his work, but is an excellent way to hear his total command of structure: swelling and rising over the ever-chiming sustain pedal that carries this music forward, one moment he will be pounding out thick left-hand chords, the next stroking out the basic essence of the melody in what (in his music) seems almost a whisper. This take on the piece 'For Tomorrow' gives some indication.
As he entered the '90s, he tended to concentrate on smaller groups in contrast to the expanded units of the '70s and '80s (though there are some excellent big band recordings still), including a group with Bobby Hutcherson and a duo with, of all people, Stéphane Grappelli, as well as some completely powerhouse trio work with bassist Charnett Moffett (this version of 'Passion Dance' reaches some new levels of thunder)...The repertoire perhaps tended to standards a little more -- one critic suggests that Tyner had begun to function as a kind of 'jazz historian' -- though standards appear throughout his body of recorded work, but that sound was still in place. And it was there even when, in the very last years of work, he lost some of the speed and sonic massiveness that characterised the majority of his post-Coltrane work, adopting instead an approach perhaps a little more laid-back, yet still frequently exciting and intense. Judging by the recordings, often live sessions, what was by then a well-worn style was no less effective for that. I still kick myself for missing the opportunity to see him play in London a few years back.
Of course, we'll always come back to the recordings with Coltrane: the way the piano sets up 'My Favorite Things', Tyner's repeating chordal pattern almost as familiar as the main melody itself, the graven thickness of his playing around 1965, for my money the quartet's most exciting year. Tyner is not often thought of as a 'free' player -- his rhythmic insistence is too solidly in place to enable the freed-up pulse central to much of the 'New Thing' -- but it's precisely that contrast with the playing around him that imparts records like Ascension and Meditations with their unique and vital tension and beauty -- after the ferocity of Coltrane and Sanders' double-soloing on 'Consequences', Tyner's solo, beginning about five minutes in, is as good a display as any of his capacity to build a solo that felt like a structured suite rather than a linear run-through over changes. Dave Liebman calls it: “a mini-twentieth-century piano concerto in scope, intensity and technique”, setting the scene for “benediction”. When I hear the emotional and technical contour of that solo I think of the praise heaped on (say) The Köln concert, and I think of how Tyner accomplishes all of that in just five minutes. A great loss.
And a quick summary of some recent pieces that have come out in other venues:
This piece on 'Cecil Taylor's Voodoo Poetics' at Bill Shoemaker's wonderful online journal Point of Departure. Have been following PoD since its inception back in, and honoured to be included. The issue also includes excerpts from Blank Forms' excellent reprint of Joseph Jarman's Black Case.
Write-up at Art Forum of Anthony Braxton's residency at Cafe Oto earlier this year -- part of a European tour with the new 'Standards Quartet' (Braxton, Alexander Hawkins, Neil Charles and Stephen Davis).
Also at Art Forum, a write-up of the Art Ensemble of Chiagco (plus guests) late last year.
And a piece on the life work of Sean Bonney at The Poetry Foundation.
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