April 27, 2009: McCoy Tyner today

McCoy Tyner is probably still best known for his piano work in the rhythm section of John Coltrane's "classic" quartet, one of the most imaginative and provocative sources of jazz experimentation around the middle of the twentieth century.  Tyner's work was, indeed, far more rhythmic than melodic, consisting of rich, full-handed chords that defied most of the conventions of harmonic progression, usually played off-beat in counterpoint to the intricate drum patterns of Elvin Jones.  The program book for the SFJAZZ Spring Season applied the adjective "volcanic" to that quartet;  and it is easy to associate Tyner's bursts of chords with the spurts of lava erupting from an active volcano.

Since leaving Coltrane, Tyner has returned to melody to drive his subsequent explorations;  and last night at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre he was joined by vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson in those explorations, backed up by Gerald Cannon on bass and Eric Kamau Gravatt on drums.  With the exception of "How Deep is the Ocean," the melodies were Tyner's own.  "Blues on the Corner" (which has a YouTube recording with Tyner's trio joined by saxophonist Joe Lovano, rather than Hutcherson) is a reflection on growing up in Philadelphia;  but most of Tyner's melodies have a more exotic feel to them, evoking a wide variety of global influences.  If Ahmad Jamal's performance at the beginning of this month had left me thinking about Karlheinz Stockhausen, Tyner seemed to invoke some of the spirits of early twentieth-century France, not only with regard to that Ravel-Gershwin connection that I find so significant but also in the way that composers like Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy were absorbing their own global influences, from which they would then weave their own characteristically unique melodies and harmonies.

Hutcherson, a few years younger than Tyner's 70, has had his own experiences with provocative experimentation.  He was part of Eric Dolphy's 1964 Out to Lunch session for Blue Note, which also included Freddie Hubbard's trumpet and rhythm from Richard Davis on bass and Tony Williams on drums.  In terms of the time-line of jazz history, this session took place a few months before the sessions for the Coltrane Quartet's Crescent album for Impulse! Records.  However, in spite of his avant-garde track record, Hutcherson still seemed quite comfortable in Tyner's melodic element, weaving his own elaborations around the cores of each of Tyner's melodies.

For the most part this was a high-energy evening, driven by Gravatt's often explosive drumming (sometimes reminiscent of the ways in which Jones was always pushing his envelope) and Cannon's lively bass.  Cannon took several solos of his own, which showed the extent to which he could convey both melody and harmony through the intricate fingering of his instrument (a sense of performance that he may well have picked up from the unaccompanied cello works of Johann Sebastian Bach).  The whole evening was a vivid reminder that some of the most inventive minds of jazz history are still inventing, often with far more originality than their younger contemporaries.