The extent to which purely instrumental music can be “political” is debatable, but there is no doubt that certain echoes of the zeitgeist may be heard in the impassioned, righteous outpourings of the generation that played through the civil rights era in the US.
Detroit saxophonist JD Allen summons the spirits of those lions of modernist saxophone playing – John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, John Gilmore and others – to frame his response to our own era of crisis and doubt.
The result, Allen’s sixth release for the Savant label, is a bravura display of improvisational courage and inventiveness – with impeccable support from guitarist Liberty Ellman, bassist Gregg August and drummer Rudy Royston – that draws a clear line, musically and ideologically, between the present and the past.
