Steve Coleman and Five Elements - The Ascension to Light (2001)

Chicago-born saxophonist Steve Coleman has been a controversial figure since the emergence of the multi-idiomatic, free-funk M-Base movement he inspired in America in the late 1980s. Coleman's music through the past decade has seemed to suggest the steady maturing of a new Sun Ra, Anthony Braxton or George Russell for contemporary jazz - yet his struggle with form has also sidelined his reputation into an enthusiasts' tributary. This disc is released to coincide with a rare Coleman UK tour for his big band on the Contemporary Music Network, starting today.
Like Sun Ra, Coleman devotes his music to mystical ends, hearing in it reflections of inner rhythms and anti-rhythms in the universe that are inaudible or downright flimflam to many of his fellow citizens. Like Braxton, Coleman professes a scientific and mathematical analysis of musical movement, and like Russell he combines a bold spirit of enquiry about the possibilities of jazz form with a radical reappraisal of orthodox idioms.
Coleman is also a remarkable saxophone improviser with an unclassifiable style - sometimes eerily echoing both the impassive maze-wandering intricacies of the long-gone Cool School hero Lenny Tristano, and the speed and impassioned tone of Charlie Parker.
Coleman points out that this session couldn't have happened without the music that he's created before it, which is a reflection of his tireless globetrotting in pursuit of music-inspiration and information - in West Africa, Cuba, Brazil and India - and a rich musical childhood that began with classical music, absorbed funk in his teens, and then meticulously studied, solo by solo, of the work of Charlie Parker. He worked in Thad Jones's and Mel Lewis's hard-swinging big band, developing an affection for the rumbustious collisions of big-ensemble riffing you can still hear in his music.
If arcane spiritual dedications irritate you, don't stop at the portentous title of The Ascension to Light, because it works whether you buy the accompanying baggage or not. Coleman's attention to the minutiae of rhythmic and melodic overlays has sometimes made his work monotonous, but this is a set full of changes. It begins with a typical exercise in his melodically tight, intricately zigzagging postbop, and moves on to a meditative piece featuring a harmonica that suggests Stevie Wonder played very slowly. Long and solemn recitation of morality tracts from ancient religious texts against Chinese stringed instruments and gongs lead to bursts of postbop skydiving, and a sax/trumpet interaction (the excellent Ralph Alessi is here, as is the exciting saxophonist Gary Thomas) over a lumpy, offbeat funk-drum pulse typifies Coleman's love of multifarious tempos. This piece of urban-streets impressionism gives way to a series of peaceful, reflective harmony studies that become intermittently funky, then turn into soft melodic intertwinings that almost echo the Birth of the Cool recordings, and the final track mixes an amiable, swing-band feel. ~theguardian

Track listing
01. Reciprocity (10:30)
02. Embryo (8:16)
03. The 42 Assessors (17:36)
04. Urban (1:56)
05. Instantaneous (6:32)
06. Obscurity (6:44)
07. Cüd Ba-Rith Redraft (5:03)
08. Polarity and Equilibrium in a Fluid (9:11)
09. Treading Water (8:41)

Personnel
- Steve Coleman - Alto saxophone, clavé, Chinese gong, vocals, composer
- Gary Thomas - Tenor saxophone
- Ralph Alessi - Trumpet
- Shane Endsley - Trumpet
- Vijay Iyer - Piano
- David Gilmore - Guitar
- Anthony Tidd - Bass
- Sean Rickman - Drums
- Gregoire Maret - Harmonica
- Thomas Goodwin - Philosophy
- Min Xiao-Fen - Pipa
- Cassandra Wilson - Vocals
- Sophia Wong - Vocals



Thx to tolig