Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Steve Coleman and Five Elements: Weaving Symbolics

336

Steve Coleman and Five Elements: Weaving Symbolics

By

View read count
Steve Coleman and Five Elements: Weaving Symbolics
Philosopher, conceptualist, theoretician and supremely original alto saxophonist Steve Coleman has issued more than twenty albums over the last twenty years under his own name, all of which helped perpetuate his notion of the M-Base (macro-basic array of spontaneous extemporization) collective. Less a musicians' club than a way of thinking about music creation, Coleman and his band employ M-Base to combine structure with improvisation on Weaving Symbolics and deliver music that fuses funk, soul, world beat and jazz.

The song titles betray a New Age sensibility, but the music is complex yet accessible, and presented with passion coated in a professional sheen. This prodigious two-disc set offers a collection of nineteen cuts (totaling two hours) laid down in Brooklyn, Philadelphia and Salvador, Brazil—and the diversity of location is mirrored by the variety of band configurations.

"Ritual is performed by a septet (where three percussionists count as one); there's also Coleman solo, an alto/voice duo, a trio for alto, trumpet and trombone, and a sax/bass/drum trio anchored by Eric Revis and Jeff "Tain Watts, who play with their usual profound swing and dark melodicism. Pianist Jason Moran and drummer Marcus Gilmore round out the trio on "Tehu Six and "Tehu Seven ; Moran's distinctive touch and tasteful mastery shimmer.

The larger group tracks were recorded in Brazil and are kissed with a hint of samba, along with exotic touches of guitar and flute, but your overall response to this music will depend on your taste for the wordless scatting vocalese of Jen Shyu, whose agreeable tone places her somewhere between Cassandra Wilson and Irene Aebi, but tends to distract from the excellence of the various bands, otherwise unadorned and unbridled.

Track Listing

Ritual-Solo (Aether); Tehu Seven; Tetragrams/Astrology I ; Circle Weaving Thirteen; Ritual-Duo (Water); Gregorian; Unction; Triad Mutations II; Ritual-Trio (Air); Li Bai/Astrology II; Triad Mutations II; Ritual-Trio (Earth); Tehu Six; Glyphs in Motion; Triad Mutations III; Ritual-Septet (Fire); Numerology; Trigrams/Astrology III; Circle Weaving Eleven.

Personnel

Steve Coleman
saxophone, alto

Steve Coleman: alto saxophone; Tim Albright: trombone; Felipe Alexsandro: percussion; Jonathan Finlayson: trumpet; Marcus Gilmore: drums; Malik Mezzadri: flute; Jason Moran: piano; Sarah Murcia: bass; Eric Revis: bass; Nei Sacramento: percussion; Jen Shyu: vocals; Luciano Silva: percussion; Anthony Tidd: bass; Nelson Veras: guitar; Reggie Washington: bass; Jeff "Tain" Watts: drums.

Album information

Title: Weaving Symbolics | Year Released: 2007 | Record Label: Label Bleu

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

Near

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.