David S. Ware Trio - The Balance (Vision Festival XV +) November 9, 2018

"The Balance" is the fourth edition in the DSW-ARC Series; it presents an outstanding and incendiary David S. Ware concert, in trio with William Parker and Warren Smith. A tenor sax / bass / drums excursion displaying full vitality from the first note, this suite of spontaneous form was created at NYC’s Vision Festival in 2010. Ware had been a perennial at this vital annual gathering since its beginning; this was his first time back since the revered Quartet bid farewell there in 2006 [hear "Renunciation"], and it was an exhilarating return. 

This DSW Trio convened only three times over their 10 month existence: the Dec. 2009 studio session for "Onecept", =this= June concert, and the Oct. 2010 album release celebration at the Blue Note in NYC [documented on "Live In New York, 2010"]. 

Also included here are four out-takes from the "Onecept" session – all of which had been completed & considered for inclusion at that time. The three releases together present the =total work= which this group created. 

Each of their three communions has its own flavor: Onecept deals exquisitely with s p a c e and features David on three different horns (tenor, stritch, saxello), with Warren Smith on tympanis/percussion in addition to drum set. The night at the Blue Note features the most extensive documentation of Ware on alto sax in existence (a straight version; the stritch), with the Mid & Far-Eastern tones he brought forth on the instrument blossoming beautifully over the course of two sets in an intimate setting. =This= festival stage concert is premier 21st Century free jazz rendered with the virtuosity and lucidity that only Ware (with his esteemed peers) could provide. An utterly complete treat. 

CD is packaged in a very limited edition deluxe 6-panel digipak, with liner notes by Ware’s long-time producer, photographs from the concert, and the vivid witness painting on the cover, which was made during this performance. 

David S. Ware: tenor saxophone, saxello (on 5, 6)

William Parker: bass

Warren Smith: drums, tympanis/percussion (on 5, 6, 7)

All compositions by David S. Ware,

with William Parker & Warren Smith;

© Gandharvasphere/Daswa (ASCAP)

Vision Festival XV performance recorded by Stefan Heger

at Abrons Art Center, NYC on June 27, 2010

Tracks 4–7 recorded by Michael Marciano

at Systems Two Studios, Brooklyn on December 2, 2009

Mixed with & mastered by Michael Marciano at Systems Two

Produced by Steven Joerg

Cover art: Painting by Jeff Schlanger, musicWitness®

made during this VF XV performance.

1. Vision Suite 2010 - part 1

2. Vision Suite 2010 - part 2

3. Vision Suite 2010 - part 3

4. Kama

5. Virtue

6. Bodhisattva

7. Gnavah

David S. Ware Quartet - Oblations and Blessings (SILKHEART RECORDS 2018)

This session, recorded in a superb midtown studio in New York during September 1995, shows the David S. Ware Quartet at the height of its powers. This is one of the foremost groups playing today and their performance here is captured by engineer Nick Prout with extraordinary clarity. The development of David S. Ware's music is one of the more significant histories in today's jazz and earlier examples from the Silkheart catalogue are 113, 127, and 128. 

To say that David Spencer Ware is an enigma is to say that the 46-year old tenor saxophonist has been blessed. Nowadays the quest to create anything that seems in any way out of step with what generally passes for creative expression is an exceedingly uncomfortable enterprise. Especially when one considers the many mundane matters that converge on an artist in order to thwart such pursuits. But those of us who think art should bridge the widening gap between the uplifting and the uninspired need only listen to Ware and his mordacious quartet for an idea what music can become when it is perceived as - to borrow a phrase an open sky. That the tenorman has been able to both retain his vision in the current climate and translate it into statements that capture the hearts and minds of attentive listeners everywhere is indeed evidence that he possesses a...  more

1. Oblations and Blessings 17:06

2. Riff Unknown 10:53

3. Of Shambhala 11:05

4. Fire Within 11:07

5. Manu's Ideal 10:13

6. Serpents and Visions 08:37

David S. Ware tenor saxophone

Matthew Shipp piano

William Parker bass

Whit Dickey drums

Various Artists - Spirit of New Jazz (SILKHEART RECORDS 2018)

"We'd like to thank you at Silkheart for making the best compilation album of any kind that we've ever heard." 

Rick Petrie, WITR/FM 89.7 Rochester Institute of Technology, N.Y., April 1993

Through the long and rich history of jazz there have been a handful of labels that have defined their own jazz era. In the 1920s it was pioneering labels like Paramount and Vocalion, in the 1930s it was Decca and Bluebird. In the post-War era, with the creative burst of Bop and Progressive jazz, it was labels like Dial and Roost and Prestige and Blue Note that gave the musicians their first place to be heard. Now, in a new jazz era, it's a new label, Silkheart, that's giving us the sound of today's break-through musicians who are defining jazz in their time.

On Silkheart you'll hear artists like Charles Gayle, William Hooker, David Ware, Matt Shipp, Ahmed Abdullah, Charles Brackeen, Rob Brown, Charles Tyler, and Steve Lacy, and this is the only kind of music you'll hear on Silkheart. This is a label that's dedicated to the new music and its creators.

Silkheart is the result of a collaboration between two enthusiasts who have spent years hearing and evaluating what is happening in today's jazz. The studio production is in the hands of Keith Knox, who is well known as a jazz writer and critic and as producer of some of the most adventurous music to be found anywhere. He produced artists like Okay Temiz for the World Jazz catalog of Sonet Records, and he brought Charles Tyler to Storyville Records for two breakthrough albums.

The final decisions on what to record are made with his partner, Swedish jazz lover Lars-Olof Gustavsson, who spent many years in New York soaking up jazz in the era of loft music and free jazz. Lars seems to spend as much time in New York as he does in Sweden, and he is just as involved in the NewYork jazz club scene today. It is this personal involvement in the new jazz that makes Silkheart unique, and gives the music on Silkheart its immediacy in today's jazz world.

Sam Charters

1. Ahmed Abdullah Quartet - Reflections on a Mystic 5:12

2. Michael Bisio Quartet - A.M. 5.28

3. Charles Brackeen Quartet - House of Gold 9:04

4. Booker T. Trio - What a Friend We Have in Jesus 5:38

5. David S. Ware Trio - An Ancient Formula 5:45

6. Dennis Charles Triangle - Afro-Amer. Ind 7:15

7. Charles Gayle Trio - Eternal Now 7:32

8. Ethnic Heritage Ensemble - Ancestral Song 5:43

9. Joel Futterman Quartet - Reality on Edge 7:51

10. Rob Brown Trio - Escape Velocity 6:36

11. Dennis Gonzalez Quartet - Boi Fuba 3:03

12. Other Dimensions in Music - Spirits Rise/Fall 6:13

David S. Ware Quartet - Great Bliss Vol​.​2 (SILKHEART RECORDS 2018)

"Along with his potent tenor, Ware's rugged flute work is particularly noteworthy." 

Milo Fine, Cadence, June 1993 

"Despite the major muscles this quartet flexes, I still find my favotite track to be Saxelloscape One, a sassy, acidic virtuoso solo that's got to be the definitive statement on the instrument." 

John Baxter, Option, March-April 1993

The 1980s saw the rise of new ways of structuring unnotated improvisation. Conductor Butch Morris spontaneously orchestrates the music of his players with an extensive and eloquent vocabulary of hand gestures. Anthony Braxton's compositions often contain detailed instructions to a performer, without prescribing actual pitches. John Zorn organizes elaborate game plans for improvisers. A few weeks after David S. Ware's Great Bliss project was recorded, at a performance by his bassist, William Parker's sextet, when one of the four horn players was soloing, the others would confer verbally and via hand-signals to concoct varied hacking figures. (Which is a modern version of the way Kansas City swing bands would set background riffs.) It's been a long time since improvised music – jazz – has been simply a matter of blowing on changes or pure...  more

1. One Two Three 12:28

2. Emptiness 04:20

3. Primary Piece III 08:18

4. Saxelloscape Two 05:30

5. The Child Without - The Child Within 11:28

6. Strichland 12:36

7. Low Strata 06:10

8. Reign of Peace 11:10

David S. Ware flute, tenor sax, saxello, stritch

Matthew Shipp piano

William Parker bass

Marc Edwards drums, tympany, chimes, gongs

David S. Ware Quartet - Great Bliss Vol​.​1 (SILKHEART RECORDS 2018)

"Ware says of this music, 'Just empty yourself and let the music take you.' And with this recording, his unit delivers heart-felt, adventurous music that captivates throughout. The session captures a striking ensemble playing with impassioned energy and decisive empathy." 

Michael Rosenstein, Cadence, May 1993

You'd have to be deaf not to hear this music's power spirit. I'd once written that David S. Ware's music is a form of jazz revivalism, "except that what he revives is the scalding-scrawling-sprawling free style of the '60s." These improvisations pack the same sort of excitement many of us first encountered in the break-through music of that time – the sound of old barriers falling and new towers going up: the sound of new spirituals. Still, I now know that that characterization of Ware's music was naive – not least because David himself set me straight.

"The way I play the saxophone now is the same way I've been playing it since I picked it up in 1959," Ware told me during a break in recording the two-volume Great Bliss project. "Of course I listened to all the great musicians of the '60s – Ornette Coleman, Coltrane, Rollins, Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, Roland Kirk, Albert Ayler. But my music addresses itself to a universal kind of feeling that transcends decades and everything else. That's not to say that other musics don't do that. But I'm totally into the spiritual value of the music." That roster of greats aside, however, David S. Ware is not one of those musicians who carries a checklist of role models around in his head, ticking off one after another as he proceeds from derivative piece to derivative piece. You can attribute specific aspects of Ware's style to one or another of the players who've caught his ear over the years – if you don't feel vibrations in the air, Jack, you're dead. But Ware always sounds like himself. Multi-instrumentalism lets him expand his concept, even as he attends to each of his instruments' particular strengths. 

Great Bliss – which was conceived as a two-installment project, by the way; the second volume will be every bit as strong as this one – marks the first time Ware has played flute on records. But his douhle-and triple-tonguing, and the clear, reedy sound he gets, sets him apart from most saxophonists who take up that instrument. Ware has been working hard on the flute for several years, and the woodshedding has paid audible dividends. Listen to the first few minutes of "Forward Motion" for proof.

I'm particularly taken by Ware's stritch and saxello work here; on either horn his sound is a throaty, compelling holler that raises the hairs on the back of your neck. Stritch, and the saxello's cousin the manzello, are of course closely associated with Roland Kirk. David says both horns date from the 1930s, when about 500 of each were made for use as band instruments. Both are fingered exactly like saxophones, and have conical bores like saxes. The saxello is really a B-flat soprano, except that the bell juts out at a 90-degree angle, and there's a slight crook at the neck.

The stritch is an E-flat alto, shaped much like the saxello, except it has only a slight crook before the bell as well as at the neck. Both horns have a vocal quality similar to that of the traditional straight soprano; the sound seems to leap out of them. "Roland Kirk was really my catalyst to play the flute and the stritch," David says. "I appreciated so much what he did on them. I heard those instruments as an open field – an open sky. A sound that grabs the ear. The night before I bought the stritch, I had a dream that I was holding a note on an instrument, and that note was so fulfilling. I didn't know what that horn was. But I had seen a stritch hanging in a repair shop in Greenwich Village, and decided to get it. I went back and bought the saxello a month later.

His fascination with these relatively recent acquisitions aside, Ware is still best known as a tenor player – that's the horn he started with, the one he played during extended stints with Cecil Taylor and with Andrew Cyrille in the mid-'70s, the one featured on his own previous alhums for Hat Hut, Palm and Silkheart, Ware's darkly brawny and full-throated sound on tenor is partially explained by the fact that he uses the most open mouthpiece that'll play in tune – a cavernous #10 model he had to special order. (Ware is a barrelchested man with no shortage of lungpower.) But there's much more to this sound than the mechanics – every note conveys how seriously he takes his music. "You have to be very cautious with the saxophone,"David says. "The instrument is so powerful, sometimes the body cannot assimilate all that energy, sound and power your nervous system has to deal with. The flute is a very powerful instrument too – playing it involves a pure airstream.

"With wind instruments, you're always dealing with air. Air is a purifier. In yoga, they use the term prana. The closest translation we can come up with is 'the lifeforce that's in the air.' In yoga, there are thousands of breathing exercises used to purify the body. But you have to do them as prescribed; if you do them wrong, you could hurt yourself. 

"You could spend 100 percent of your time working on each of these instruments – the flute, the tenor, saxello and stritch – and I'm sorry I can't spend all day on each of them. But you've got to know how much you can practice every day – after that, you can go and relax. Everyone was amazed by the things Rahsaan played – circular breathing, and playing three instruments at one time – but now he's gone. I'm not saying he shouldn't have done that, but there's a risk involved." 

Ware's caution explains one of the appealing things about his playing: for all his passion, he leaves space in his lines; for all his force, he doesn't crowd your ears. Which is not to say that he's taking it easy. "It's great to have a challenge. In music, there are certain problems to be overcome, that are inherent in a composition or a certain instrument, problems you have to get through to play what you want to play. There's only one way to do that: you've got to practice, you've got to play, and lead a disciplined life. It takes thousands and thousands of hours alone with an instrument. I love solitude – it's a form of bliss for me.

"Along with the other changes happening in the world, regarding the possibilities of the human spirit – like the Berlin Wall coming down – a lot of things should be happening in the arts, music especially. The further we go into the next century, the less garbage we should see and hear. We should awaken to a higher purpose in music.

"Music should bring out the inner quality in individuals and in life. The first purpose of music is not to entertain, but to raise the human spirit. Music is really a science. In India, where circular breathing may have originated, the whole science of music comes through meditation, revealed through silence – seers and saints, sitting in silence." There's a dramatic illustration of his respect for quietude on "Sound Bound" – the six seconds of silence that arrives about nine minutes into the piece. Other musicians might have nervously filled the space. Ware and company understand that silence is a precious as sound. This is a good a place as any to touch on the extraordinary way this music was put together. (It'll be dealt with more fully in the notes to Great Bliss, Vol 2, Silkheart 128.)

The problem with most jazz records is that they're under-rehearsed: by the time the players settle in together, the recording is over. This three-day sesssion was very much the exception – Ware began rehearsing the members of the quartet over three months in advance, and they played for five davs straight before heading into the studio.

In another sense, this music began forming long before that, when David and drummer Marc Edwards began playing together in Boston in 1968; Edwards has been on all but one of David's own dates, and played with him in a 1976 Cecil Taylor unit. Ware and Edwards first crossed paths with bassist William Parker in 1973, in a Taylor Big Band. Edwards and Parker were the rhythm section on Ware's previous album, the 1988 recording Passage to Music (Silkheart 113). When David made it known he was thinking of adding a piano player to the mix, Parker and fellow bassist Reggie Workman both recommended Matthew Shipp, who was 29 at the time of these recordings. His only previous record was a duo set (Sonic Explorations, Cadence Jazz 1037) with a Silkheart stablemate altoist Rob Brown. Shipp's one of the rare pianists who makes extensive use of extended techniques who isn't heavily indebted to Cecil Taylor. "People are going to find out about Matthew very soon," Ware says. "He's one of a kind, even now." 

About these sessions in general, David says "It takes a long time to prepare cats, the way I like to do things. The tenor pieces are more permanently structured. As you can hear, "Bliss Theme" and "Thirds" (the latter built on intervals of a third, obviously enough) are harmonized lines, even if David's tongue-talking tenor sails outside the chords. "But the pieces we did with flute, saxello and stritch are pure concept," he continues. "The rehearsals are a performance – we keep working on concepts till they crystallize. You have to know what to do with freedom – you can give yourself enough rope to hang yourself. But when you have the concept and the discipline, and a drug-free nervous system is there, you can really get it. It's an intuitive knitting and intertwining. Each thread comes together to make the fabric that is the piece."

Indeed, given the high spirits and raw edge that helps characterize this music, there's a wealth of wondrous detail to be heard as these pieces blossom. Take the way Parker's singing arco bass figure intertwines with Shipp's descending chords a little over seven minutes into "Forward Motion," their interplay eventually dissolving into Edwards' trap-set vignette. These pieces order themselves: on "Cadenza," the rhythm players drop out – to let the leader's stritch dance on its own – then dive back in, in spontaneous call and response. The subsequent solos evolve naturally out of the texture of the music. Indeed, the discovery of organic form in the playing is one of the marvels of improvised music, and one of the key pleasures of Great Bliss.

"I hope people take the time to sit down and listen to this music, to give it a chance," David S. Ware says as he brings our talk to a close. "Don't come to it with any preconceived notions. Just empty yourself and let the music take you. For those who like to travel, instead of getting on a bus or a train, put it on. It'll take you somewhere." 

Kevin Whitehead

cadenza 

crisp 

not the dull colors 

of this morning's 

sky 

crisp 

now in masses 

these colors disperse 

with the oncoming 

cold 

pushed 

the music bounces from one 

skin to another 

one human cloud 

to another 

moving eastward – moving northward 

moving 

the skin outward up & 

downward 

the crowd gathers for 

the matinee performance 

of GYPSY 

we – even the rooted – are gypsies 

crisp 

active sensing 

the cadenza pushing 

beneath the heart. 

Steve Dalachinsky 

1/10/90 

Sound On Sound Studios

1. Forward Motion 12:11

2. Angular 05:19

3. Bliss Theme 09:02

4. Cadenza 11:48

5. Sound Bound 12:08

6. Mind Time 04:28

7. Saxelloscape One 04:33

8. Thirds 13:55

David S. Ware flute, tenor sax, saxello, stritch

Matthew Shipp piano

William Parker bass

Marc Edwards drums, tympany, chimes, bells, percussion

David S. Ware Trio - Passage to Music (SILKHEART RECORDS 2018)

"Ware's trio soars, moving through the reed man's straightforward, fairly open, or ingeniously labyrinthian tunes and arrangements. His tunes and approach seem to court catalyzation, a state into which Parker and Edwards seem eager to enter. Ware's trio not only digs in but, more importantly, lets go. And it is that action that makes for magic music." 

Milo Fine, Cadence, October 1989

David S. Ware is a man who understands the communicative powers of the saxophone, the sonic weight and the translucence to harsh textures that have made the instrument so fundamental to the idiom of Afro-American improvising. The substantial girth of his tone, especially on the tenor, separates him from those who have no more than a counterfeit connection to the music which evolved in the wake of Ornette Coleman's quartet opening at New York's Five Spot in November of 1959. Ware draws such rich beauty from his instruments through the most rudimentary of all elements individual timbre. Within that timbre we hear a lyricism poignantly soured by the memory of times hard on the heart. But there is also wilfully primitive form given to an evident receptiveness to mystery, not to mention the feeling of disastrous disappointments, or of nearly hysterical jot. There is even a luminous stoicism that merges with the swallowed sobs of a far from insensitive soul.

But mush is never the subject here. The tears that foam up through that tone areas old as plantation field hollers, as old as even the barbaric recognition primitive man saw in the distance between pain and pleasure, between the acceptance of affection and the rejection of tenderness. The conditions of which Ware's music speaks are far beyond the most simple-minded contexts or the most literal explanations of human endeavor. Where there is struggle heard in the music, where there is perhaps anger, where there is deep mourning for an intangible body of elusive information, where the saxophone arches up over the rhythm section or merges with it for undulating blocks of sound, there is always the audible proof of great skill. This man is no charlatan; charlatans never get their instruments to sound as he does, nor are they capable of the calling, keening, singing passages served on such a big invisible platter of tone. Everything one hears in Ware's playing is the result of long hours of practice, great diligence and care in the production of sound.

Ware is clearly a man who has heard the sound of such masters as Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, John Gilmore, and the most ardent primitive of the '60s – Albert Ayler. I never believed that you could play if you didn't work on your saxophone technique. You just have to practice. That's all there is to it. I have always been like that, and people have always commented on my tone. I have always been into the sound of the saxophone. All of the saxophone players I have ever appreciated have that in their music. They all have a tone. I think I have one by now, too. But the most important thing about sound is how you use it in different situations. What I'm looking for now is all of the best ways to use my sound and to put that sound together with different moods and different kinds of grooves that will give me a chance to get at the kinds of elements I always appreciated in the people who gave something special to the music.

What Ware is after is the way to utilize the conceptions of musics he likes, not the literal ways in which those conceptions are executed. That is of the utmost importance in the fashioning of an individual style: knowing that there is a big difference between the way an idea is executed and the idea itself. In Ware's playing, never far below the surface is a substantial understanding of the way Coleman Hawkins got sound out of the saxophone, of what Sonny Rollins was after in all the remarkable permutations of his personality, of the shout that Coltrane brought (as Roy Haynes pointed out) from the church

Even though there aren't literal uses of the forms from the past, one almost always hears the contemplative intensity of the blues, the reverential vibrato of the spiritual, the rugged phrasing counterpointed by big sweeps of liquid tone, and always a determined appreciation of vitality, whether whispered or screamed, slipped up on or snatched. Such qualities are the ones that attracted master drummer Andrew Cyrille to Ware, whom he has known since the middle seventies and with whom he performed in his own band, from then through the early eighties. "He is a natural tenor player whose gifts are plentiful and just needs the opportunity to explore the gamut of his talents.

When he worked in my band, he brought some interesting ideas to the bandstand. He and I used to hang out together and we went to Europe for a couple of tours. He's on my albums Celebration, Junction, Meta-Musician Stomp, and Special People. David was one of the ones who was always on or before time to rehearsal. Technically, he was always on top of the music.

"David is a reflective and meditative type of personality, but at the same time full of fire, with a clear sense of direction. He's a reserved personality and somewhat reticent until you get to know him. David is also of the mystic breed. Sonny Rollins is his mentor. I have a tape of him and Sonny Rollins playing and there are places where you can't tell them spart. That's how talented and attentive to nuances he is. "David is also a clean liver and doesn't have any interest in smoking, drinking, drugs." 

Those talents and concerns were nurtured through a long process of development. Born November 7, 1949 in Plainfield, NJ., Ware began playing music around the age of eleven, performing on alto and baritone saxophones as well as bass in the Scotch Plains-Fanwood School System. On his own, Ware took up the tenor and worked on it away from school. At school, however, Ware was always progressing and getting experience in marching bands, dance bands, concert bands, all-state bands and orchestras. At the age of 14, in the summer of 1964, Ware spent a good number of evenings listening to Sonny Rollins at the Five Spot in Manhattan, or at the Village Vanguard, or the Village Gate. "Every time he played, I tried to be there. Sonny was very nice to me and was always encouraging me. He would write me letters around that time. I don't remember now what was in them except that they were helpful in keeping me serious about music. He was really an inspirational musician." 

Ware continued his studies and moved to Boston, where he lived from 1967 to 1973, playing at Boston University, on college radio, local music festivals, and at The Black Avant Garde Coffee House. During the early 1970s, he began practicing with Rollins, who was then living in Brooklyn. "Quite a few times, we practiced at his place in Brooklyn, or he would rent a loft and we would practice there, or when I had a place on Canal Street in New York.

He even invited me down to play with my band opposite him for a set at the Vanguard in 1972. But when we were practicing together, we would just play. No tunes or anything. He never plays any things that had traditional melodies. Even if I did, he would just blow. Those where definitely inspirational experiences. Sonny Rollins – what else can you say?" 

From that point on, Ware began to move into the higher echelon of the period's avant garde. He performed with Andrew Cyrille's group, with Cecil Taylor's big band at Carnegie Hall in 1974, including US, European and Canadian tours in 1976 and 1977, with the bands of Milford Graves, Beaver Harris, with Cecil Taylor's Unit as a regular member, and with his own groups at lofts like Studio RivBea and Environ. 

Ware began to get something of a reputation as one of the most powerful younger players, but most importantly, he was able to show off, particularly in his own bands, the interest in creating his own version of the traditional elements of the music. His experience playing with musicians in Boston such as Michael Brecker and Bob Neloms had given him another angle from which to look at the music, given the involvement each of them had with more traditional styles than the one Ware was then working on. His lessons with Joe Viola and Charlie Mariano were also helpful, as were his experiences in big bands conducted by Herb Pomeroy.

At this point, Ware has at his command a size-able talent and is intent on making good use of it. "Over the last few years I have been working on slowing my stuff down and writing music that will give me the variety I hear in my head. I have always listened closely to the masters and have always wanted to let something I like come in through my ears and get put together another way through the forces of my own musical nervous system."

This recording is good proof of what Ware has under control at this point. One of the most interesting things about it is that though he had only been playing the stritch and the saxello all of six months when he took his trio into the studio, he already had superbly broad and controlled tones on each of them, tones that sat well next to that of his tenor saxophone.

The moods of the songs are interesting in that a number of them start out of tempo, either with a grieving songfulness or a mood of majesty quite unusual for the school Ware is associated with; then the music usually moves into a faster tempo, sometimes even a different meter. The title track is a good introduction to his work, not only for Ware's improvising but for the almost obesely pungent sound of bassist William Parker and the totally sympathetic drums of Marc Edwards.

Throughout, Ware shows that what he is after is much more demanding of him and of his musicians than the random saxophone playing projected by the limited owners of instruments who have so obscured the careers of many of their betters.

But David S. Ware is not to be daunted. He knows just what he wants to get from music and from his instruments. If the listener is patient and diligent, close listenings to this music will reap a much bigger reward than you might expect. 

Stanley Crouch
1988/April 9

1. An Ancient Formula 05:50

2. Ancient Visitors 07:35

3. Passage to Music 10:51

4. African Secrets 10:52

5. The Elders Path 13:24

6. Phonetic Hymn 09:06

7. Mystery 11:47

David S. Ware tenor sax, saxello, stritch

William Parker bass

Marc Edwards drums

Ahmed Abdullah and the Solomonic Quintet featuring Charles Moffett (SILKHEART RECORDS 2018)

"The overwhelming impression I took from this most interesting recording was one of mellow warmth. A fine, inspiring release." 

Michael Tucker, Jazz Journal, June 1989

First impressions of Ahmed Abdullah's Solomonic Quintet: the deftly shifting rhythms of the dance, the soulful inflection of the song, and, always, clarity and balance. At first it was the Solomonic Quartet – trumpet, tenor, bass and drums, a drier, more brittle sound.

But the essentials were there. Charles Moffett's crisply articulated drumming, soft shoe pitter-pat circling in a ring dance inside your head, pivoting on the earth-bow throb of Fred Hopkins' bass. Ahmed Abdullah's trumpet, the clean bright call of shining brass echoing the proud lineage of Lee Morgan, Clifford Brown, Fats Navarro, but singing of today. The gruffer linearity of the tenor, played by Chico Freeman at those early gigs, then the passionate but deliberately paced talespinning of David S. Ware. A band chanting the ancient wisdom of African diaspora with the immediacy of today's media-saturated, computer-linked global dialogue.

If you hear the horns as voices, and the bass and drums as impulse and motion, then Masujaa's electric guitar is the spark that jumps from synapse to synapse, resonating the voices and the motive rhythms, facilitating dialogue and dance. It's the most recent addition to a music that's been germinating awhile now, and it has brought further clarification, a sense that each element has found its proper place. The music of the Solomonic Quintet is still volatile, still ripe with discovery, but there is also a sense of setting, a certain hard-won sufficiency. The musicians and the music sing as one voice now. One voice with many stories to tell, many points of view. 

Each of these musicians has tempered his training and inclinations and God-given talent in working situations where one is consistently called on to play at or beyond one's peak capacity, where the impulse to transcend becomes internalized, if not routine. Ahmed Abdullah's trumpet has been heard in big bands and small groups led by some of the most celebrated and discerning composer-players on the New York scene. Most recently, he has been a motivating force in The Group, a cooperative unit that also includes Marion Brown, Sirone and Andrew Cyrille. But he has been heard to best advantage with his own bands, which have consistently been characterized by balance, directness, and sense of purpose; the present Solomonic Quintet brings his gifts as a composer and improviser into even sharper focus.

David Ware, playing both tenor and stritch in this context, is a former member of the ensembles of Andrew Cyrille, Milford Graves and Cecil Taylor. Masujaa, notable for the breadth of his musical interest, recorded with Ahmed Abdullah in the early 70s on a section of Douglas Records' Wildflower Series. He has recorded more recently with Ronald Shannon Jackson's The Decoding Society, and currently plays with his own group, X Factor. Fred Hopkins has appeared on more than 60 recordings, always bringing warmth and wit to a unique style of playing bass, which is both percussive and richly melodic. This, delivered with an extraordinary exactness of timing, can be heard to great advantage here on El Canto.

Charles Moffett grew to musical maturity in Fort Worth, Texas, where he played in teenage bands alongside future giants such as Ornette Coleman, Dewey Redman, and Prince Lasha. Some years later, he helped Coleman and bassist David Izenson redefine the most basic notions of group playing, in a trio documented most enduringly on the two Blue Note LP's "Live at the Golden Circle," recorded in Stockholm. Any account of his subsequent contributions would have to include the raising of a very musical family that includes his son Charnett, now a recording artist in his own right. Charles Moffett is the creator of a unique approach to polyrhythmic percussion, combining dexterity, precision, and heart. Each part of the drum kit has its own role to play in a shifting, mercurial, light-handed, sure-footed dialogue of rhythms. At the same time, all the parts cohere, so that Moffett's drumming speaks with brisk, sharply-defined authority.

The Solomonic Quintet manages to be more than the sum of its very considerable parts, and that in itself is no small achievement. But the most impressive thing about this music is the way it feels. The depth-of-field you find in the blues is wedded to the improvisational freedoms of jazz and the plainspeaking-but-highstepping immediacy of African and Caribbean rhythms and song forms, all without a hint or artifice or strain. The music is sinewy, substantial, easy to listen to and hard to forget. It satisfies on every level, and that is rare indeed. 

Robert Palmer

1. African Songbird 07:08

2. Gypsy Lady 05:00

3. The Search 06:52

4. Canto II 04:57

5. Khaluma 07:19

6. The Dance We Do 07:29

7. Wishbone Suite 05:34

8. The Dance We Do (Take 1) 08:42

Ahmed Abdullah trumpet, fluegelhorn, voice

David S. Ware tenor saxophone, stritch

Masuhjaa el. guitar

Fred Hopkins bass

Charles Moffett drums