BILLY BANG FEATURING
FRANK LOWE
Above & Beyond: An Evening In Grand Rapids
Justin Time
Listening to the performance on Above
& Beyond: An Evening In Grand Rapids, recorded
in April 2003, it’s impossible to believe that by
September of that year saxophonist Frank Lowe would be dead
of the lung cancer that had plagued him for several years
prior to this recording. Lowe and Bang had a long history
together by the time of this recording, and Lowe played
on one of Bang’s best known recordings, Vietnam:
The Aftermath.
Lowe was known, in his earlier years, as a
proponent of the later day Coltrane/Albert Ayler/Archie
Shepp firebrand school of tenor saxophone. Like Shepp, the
only other player of that group to live into the new millennium,
Lowe’s playing over the years mellowed to demonstrate
his affinity and debt to players like Sonny Rollins and
even Coleman Hawkins. His playing is still strong on this
recording, though, despite the fact that he was working
with only one lung at this point and had to put every ounce
of his physical strength into producing the warm, robust
sound heard here. On “Nothing But Love,” one
of his own favorite compositions, he produces squeals and
squawks one might not have thought possible. While the lengthy
compositions here provide plenty of recovery time for him,
he nonetheless clearly puts his all into his solos, and
this is indeed a fine performance.
For his part, Bang is in excellent form as
well, providing soaring, searing solos that command the
listener’s attention and appeal not only to the intellect,
but to the heart as well. Three of the four compositions
here are Bang’s: the Coltrane-modal opener “Silent
Observation,” the new “Dark Silhouette”
and the spiritual “At Play In the Fields of the Lord.”
All of the compositions demonstrate the influence of African
music and the blues as well as other influences.
The rhythm section here is far from perfunctory,
and contributes mightily to the energy and momentum of the
evening. Pianist Andrew Bernkey plays flurries of ideas
in a manner that is, at times, reminiscent of Cecil Taylor;
his lengthy introduction to “Dark Silhouette”
is both beautiful and foreboding. Bassist Todd Nicholson
and drummer Tuatsuya Nakatani propel the group forward at
all times but are never relegated to perfunctory timekeeping.
Nicholson gets in a nice solo on the opening “Silent
Observation.”
Apparently Frank Lowe requested that Billy
Bang make this recording available to the public, and it
is to the great good fortune of listeners who could not
be in Grand Rapids that evening in 2003, or who were unable
to catch this group on what turned out to be the final tour
Band and Lowe made together. Sometimes final recordings
are accorded a place that is based more on the lifetime
of work that an artist has done rather than the individual
recording itself. In the case of Above & Beyond,
this is not the case—the music here stands on its
own without explanation or reservation. To know that it
is Lowe’s last recording with Bang makes it all the
more precious, but the music stands on its own as the very
definition of creative improvisational music.
