John O'Gallagher: Ancestral

Saxophonist John O'Gallagher keeps moving east in his search for musical expression. Born in Anaheim, California, before relocating to New York City and living there for thirty years, he finds himself (in 2025) in Lisbon, Portugal. He boasts a played with/recorded with resume to knock the proverbial socks off (Joe Henderson, Tony Malaby, Maria Schneider, Kenny Wheeler, and more). He also dived John Coltrane's late period explorations—Interstellar Space (Impulse!, 1974) and Stellar Regions (Impulse Records, 1967), From this Coltrane-ian immersion, he wrote his PhD dissertation. Inspired by these studies, he recorded Ancestral, an all-original set of tunes that might be tagged as free jazz, with a studied method and deliberative mindset to the freeness of the sound.

Joined by like-minded, adventurous sidemen—Ben Monder on guitar, and Andrew Cyrille and Billy Hart on drums—O'Gallagher crafts a spacious and atmospheric sound on Ancestral. Considering the presence of the electric guitar and an absence of a bass in the ensemble, a parallel to Paul Motian's recordings with saxophonist Joe Lovano and guitarist Bill Frisell come to mind: It Should Have Happened a Long Time Ago (ECM Records, 1995) and I Have The Room Above Her (ECM, 2005).

Given O'Gallagher's connection to late-period Coltrane, his "Awakening" plays out as an apt opener. The drums weave a loosely strung foundation for a spiritual saxophone mood. Monder howls in the background, like some electric Holy Ghost, as O'Gallagher does his best to uncover the truth. "Under the Wire" is a playful piece. Hart and Cyrille do a deft and delicate dance. The band plays as a cohesive entity—no surprise, given their collective experience of collaboration with nearly everyone in the modern jazz genre. "Contact" gives off an initial Spanish vibe, with one of the drummers (which one is anybody's guess; maybe it is both of them) playing a castanet-like ratta-tat, and "Alter of the Ancestors" looks back on Coltrane, circa 1967, with the drummers exploring an Elvin Jones rumbling as O'Gallagher plays with fire.

The closer, "Postscript," is improvised. An image of Coltrane—his hands clasped, his forearms on his legs as he leans forward to listen, nodding his head—may come to mind. It is a beautiful free jazz piece—not chaotic, but restrained and sacramental, like the music that came before it.