Ravi Coltrane: Live At The Village Vanguard

WBGO, November 17, 2008 - He bears the name of jazz royalty, and he's spent many hours curating, archiving and producing his parents' recordings. But when he picks up his own saxophones, Ravi Coltrane blows an original and distinctly modern strain of jazz, distilling but never seeking to imitate his family's adventurous improvising spirits. Now one of today's top saxophonists, Coltrane takes his own quartet into the same Manhattan venue where his father John Coltrane so famously held court: The Village Vanguard. Hear the Ravi Coltrane quartet perform live from the Vanguard at 9 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Nov. 19, broadcast live on air by WBGO and live online here at NPR Music.

Musically, Ravi Coltrane can be aligned with today's generation of progressive jazz musicians. His compositions experiment with shifting textures and intricate forms, and his soloing tends toward the exploratory and delicate rather than the "heavyweight" bravura associated with his father. In developing his own style, he's been abetted since 2003 by a fantastic working group: Venezuelan modernist Luis Perdomo on piano, jack-of-all-trades Drew Gress on bass, and bright young drummer E.J. Strickland. That band's latest record, 2005's In Flux, was well-received, and almost universally described as the first document of Ravi Coltrane's mature personal concept.

"John Coltrane's music is always there with you," Coltrane told NPR's Liane Hansen in 2003. "So I'm more into dealing with a person's influence not in such a technical way. I want to sound like myself, and I'd rather be more influenced by the process of what they did, how how they achieved this personal sound and got this, really. You know, that's really the goal for me, to be as personal as possible."

Ravi Coltrane hardly knew John Coltrane, who died before his son was 2 years old. He got to know his father's musical legacy in the same way most jazz musicians of his age did: through recordings, primarily. It was only when he decided to take his own musical career seriously that a teenaged Ravi Coltrane begin to listen intently to his father's music. The younger Coltrane has since surfaced several previously unreleased recordings of John Coltrane, and contributed liner notes to other reissued albums. He's also worked closely with his late mother, the pianist and harpist Alice Coltrane, in producing and playing on Translinear Light, her lauded comeback album after a 26-year musical retirement.

After making a name for himself as a versatile sideman — most notably with fellow saxophonist Steve Coleman — Ravi Coltrane has created three albums under his own name since 1997. In addition to performing with his quartet, Coltrane will join the Blue Note 7, an all-star ensemble created to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Blue Note Records, on a four-month tour of the U.S. in early 2009.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97069650