Jazz Articles about Albert Ayler

About Albert Ayler

Multiple Reviews

The Chinese mystic philosopher Lao Tzu wrote, “the flame that burns twice as bright, burns half as long." Although he never heard the music of Albert Ayler, we're sure that he would agree the saxophonist's fire music was luminescent. Ayler's career was indeed quite brief, recording only for a period of eight years until his untimely dead at age 34, in 1970. The description of the flame is also apropos, as Ayler was quoted as saying, “Trane was ...

Album Review

Albert Ayler: Spiritual Unity

Read "Spiritual Unity" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
August 13, 2014

Fifty years after the recording of Albert Ayler's Spiritual Unity, the music (and the man) are still causing tumult. It is not so much that free jazz hasn't been on our radar these past decades, it's just that this recording remains one of those “where were you, when you first heard it?" experiences. Recorded in a very small, hot studio in July of 1964, the album which thrust the new label ESP onto the map, consisted of just ...

Album Review

Albert Ayler: Lorrach, Paris 1966

Read "Lorrach, Paris 1966" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
January 28, 2014

This is the third edition of the original pressing by hatOLOGY records, containing re-masters of tenor saxophonist Albert Ayler's live performances in Lorrach, Germany, and live tracks recorded at the Paris jazz festival, culled from his 1966 European tour. In the liners, Peter Niklas Wilson asserts that the George Wein produced the “Newport in Europe" tour and that Ayler was given second-class accommodations, contrasting what was tendered to the likes of Dave Brubeck and Stan Getz. But it's also noted ...

Book Review

Albert Ayler: Lo spirito e la rivolta

by AAJ Italy Staff
October 31, 2013

di Peter Niklas Wilson Albert Ayler e la sua musica non sono più un equivoco. Il tempo, che non sempre è galantuomo, ha reso giustizia al sassofonista di Cleveland. Non tanto perché ci fosse bisogno di levarlo dall'ombra; la centralità di Ayler non è mai stata in discussione. Il merito che va riconosciuto al trascorrere degli anni, grazie all'accumularsi di riflessioni e pubblicazioni (imprescindibile Holy Ghost, il cofanetto-monumento edito dalla Revenant), è caso mai quello di aver ricondotto ...

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Album Review

Albert Ayler: Stockholm, Berlin 1966

Read "Stockholm, Berlin 1966" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
November 29, 2011

Indeed, a desert island quality album reissued with a digital uplift of celebrated tenor saxophonist Albert Ayler's 1966 Stockholm and Berlin concerts, where the artist resides in a very special musical space unlike any other. With his infamous slants on America's historical affinity for march music, Ayler's colossal presence and coiling use of vibrato looms as a mighty force, to complement a dynamo band featuring brother Donald on trumpet. Sadly, the Ayler brothers passed on too soon and, ...

192

Multiple Reviews

Albert Ayler: Knocking On The Door of Astral Jazz

by Chris May
November 7, 2011

Despite everything life threw at saxophonist Albert Ayler--critical incomprehension, paucity of performing opportunities, probable bi-polarity--his music shone with light. At the time of his passing, aged 34, drowned in New York's East River, he was, said some of his friends, in the depths of depression (leading to rumors of suicide, or, more fancifully, of murder). But he was still creating beauty--still searching for music as “the healing force of the universe," to quote from one of his album titles, or ...

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Album Review

Albert Ayler: Spiritual Unity

Read "Spiritual Unity" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
September 6, 2009

When the veracity of the history of twentieth-century art is evaluated, what will be found in the proverbial time capsule? Where will “The Music," which Jelly Roll Morton christened as jass, sit with the works that were created by important composers, ranging from Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, and John Coltrane, to Thelonious Monk,, George Russell and Cecil Taylor,? This was music that gave voice to a people and redefined the cultural iconography of the century that followed. The fact that ...