An Alto Lineage

In my last post on "must-hear" alto saxophone recordings, I highlighted Jimmy Dorsey, Tram, and Willie Smith (we could also include Buster Smith), mostly because of the influence they had on the outstanding voice on the instrument, Charlie Parker. 

Although it would be difficult to argue that any specific recording of Rudy Vallee's saxophone playing helped shaped the tradition of the alto sax, it is nonetheless the case that Vallee had apparently influenced Bird to take up the saxophone. Vallee in turn had been primarily influenced by Rudy Wiedoeft and even borrowed his first name; Bird was of course also aware of Wiedoeft. 

In 1958, Bird's leading successor, Jackie McLean, would record Vallee's "Deep Night" with Sonny Clark for the album Cool Struttin'. 

"Must-Hear" Alto Recordings

JazzTimes recently asked a number of well-known alto players to list the recordings that, in their views, "helped shape the jazz alto saxophone tradition." Their responses are here and here. 

Any list of "must-hear" alto recordings that doesn't include Charlie Parker, Lee Konitz, and Jackie McLean should be regarded as highly suspect. Of these twenty-six players, only Michael Attias and Andrew D'Angelo included all three. 

The must-hear album by Jackie McLean, by the way, is The Jackie Mac Attack Live for the track, "Cyclical." For Lee Konitz it's Live at the Half Note and Motion, but really anything Lee plays is essential. 

Benny Carter and Rab, Bostic and Ornette should all appear, of course (as they do here, though not all on the same list.) But the criterion is "great performances that helped shape the...tradition"---where are "Trumbology" and "Beebe?" Where's Willie Smith? Rudy Williams? 

Snidero is right that the must-hear Kenny Garrett is African Exchange Student, for the eponymous track. Essential Gary Bartz is Roy Hargrove's Of Kindred Souls for "My Shining Hour." Abraham Burton's Closest to the Sun is also required listening. 

But the most glaring omission? Jug's Groove Blues; "Tranesonic" from Stellar Regions; and Live in Japan---John Coltrane on alto! 

Good try, prominent alto players---keep listening.  

Lee and Warne Duo Transcriptions

Below are two more transcriptions of improvised duos by Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh from the 1959 date at the Half Note. 

Notice the abundance of imitation in "My Melancholy Baby," particularly in bars 20-21 of the first chorus, bars 1-4 and 11-13 of the second chorus, and bars 17-19 of the third chorus. 

"It's You Or No One" exhibits imitative playing as well, for example in bars 16-21 of the second chorus. Indeed, Lee and Warne are so highly attuned to each other that they converge on an identical melody in bars 31-32! 

Also note the cross-rhythm that emerges in bars 16-21 of the second chorus of "It's You Or No One" as Warne and Lee each play 3:4 polyrhythms that are out of phase with each other by one beat. (Warne's polyrhythmic figure starts on beat 4 of bar 16, completing two full periods just as Lee's starts on beat 1 of bar 18.) Despite the rhythmic complexity, this passage shows rather harmonious 4-3-6-5 voice-leading.

Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh, "My Melancholy Baby" by danvoss

Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh, "It's You Or No One" by danvoss

DTM Love

Many thanks to the great Ethan Iverson (owner of the Jazz Journalist Association's "Blog of the Year") for sharing this blog with his readers! 

"Transition"

"In 1987, Horace Silver told me [Dave Douglas] and Vincent Herring, ‘You young musicians all got the wrong musical lessons from John Coltrane.’… Horace’s point was that people who listen to Trane play all that stuff over a D minor seventh chord. They want to know how to superimpose and put the most complex substitution in. In Horace’s musical world, what was hip wasn’t what you played over one chord, but how you got from one chord to the next—voice-leading. … If you look closer at what Coltrane played, the reason all those superimpositions worked is because they were so brilliantly rhythmically voice-led.”  

Horace Silver, RIP. 

...

"Transition" is one of John Coltrane's greatest recorded performances. A harmonic reduction of his improvisation at 12:27 to 13:32 of the recording shows the smoothness and parsimony of Coltrane's voice-leading as he ascends through two octaves to a local climax. (Here I have relied on Miles Okazaki's transcription.)

The climactic altissimo A/B-flat is reached after a steady stepwise ascent in the upper voice of Coltrane's polyphonic melody, which composes out a tonic D minor triad over the course of seven (mostly) eight-bar phrases. (Emphasis on C-sharp at the start of the sixth phrase temporarily upsets the rhythmic contour of the composed-out triad.) 

In addition to D minor, tonicizations of chromatic-mediant related E-flat minor and C minor are prevalent, usually facilitated by way of the diminished triad formed by lowering the fifth degree of the tonic triad. Occasionally other sonorities containing the D/A-flat tritone are substituted for the D diminished chord; for example: A-flat diminished, B-flat7b13, and D half-diminished seventh. There are five tonicizations of E-flat minor and two of C minor in this section. 

The climactic melodic gesture consists of two transpositions of a diminished collection. The second more complete statement highlights the diminished tetrad (D F A-flat B), the "vagrant chord" which helps tonicize the remote key areas of vii and flat-ii as described above.

The D diminished triad is also central to the melodies of "Vigil" and "Suite" on the same album, suggesting the kind of compositional interrelation found in A Love Supreme, First Meditations, and Sun Ship, all from roughly the same time period. 

Following the climax, Coltrane reverses course and follows a quasi-symmetrical descent to 14:13 on the recording, again mostly by stepwise voice-leading. This section includes three tonicizations of E-flat minor and four of C minor, including a concluding "cadence" on C minor that returns him to the lower tessitura of the saxophone. 

Why the prevalence of E-flat minor and C minor tonicizations over a background D minor harmony? These harmonies originate with the theme to "Transition," which emphasizes the Phrygian scale degrees of the lowered second and seventh. The C gravitates toward the dominant and the E-flat towards the tonic, melodically embellishing that structural axis. It is quite logically beautiful, therefore, that Coltrane's improvisation harmonically integrates at a climactic juncture this notable feature of the thematic melody.

Geometric Representation of Whole Tone and Diminished Scales

Miles Okazaki shares a geometric representation of the two whole tone scales and three diminished scales in pitch-class space. 

Okazaki's hexagon with inscribed triangles is certainly more elegant than a traditional Tonnetz diagram of the same scales. 

Okazaki's diagram relates pitch classes to their proximate neighbors by step, allowing for the easy recognition of scales. The Tonnetz is intended to show tonal relations and is thus based on triads rather than steps. As a result, connecting pitch-classes in order to form scales is somewhat ungainly. 

On the other hand, it does allow for the visualization of the chords---augmented triads and diminished seventh chords---that form the whole tone and diminished scales. It also provides an easy way to visualize how the two whole tone scales and three diminished scales are related by transposition and how the diminished scales are related by inversion: by geometric "translation" and "reflection," respectively. 

Quite a bit more on this general topic here, and more about Miles. 

Key Transformation and Motive Relation in "First Meditations" and "Sun Ship"

First in an article and later in his book, Lewis Porter shows how the four movements of John Coltrane's A Love Supreme suite are integrated, specifically through the application of set class (025) to both thematic motives as well as key transpositions between movements. Porter writes: "During his final period, 1965--67, Coltrane succeeded in eliminating the feeling of sectionality altogether, so that one experiences each late work as an indivisible whole..."

A Love Supreme was recorded in December 1964. Do Coltrane's studio albums recorded later in 1965, like Sun Ship and First Meditations, exhibit similar integration through motive and key relations despite not explicitly being "suites"? 

The key areas of the fives pieces released together as First Meditations are transformationally related and can be mapped as a transformational network. I find Kopp's system of chromatic mediant transformation most useful to illustrate the triad transformations in Coltrane's music. In Kopp, R/r represent diatonic mediant relationships (two common tones), and M/m represent chromatic mediant relationships (one common tone), with major and minor third between chord roots, respectively; D/F represent the relationships between triads with a fifth between chord roots (one common tone), of the same mode and changing modes, respectively. 

The relationships between the five key areas of First Meditations (Ab-flat major, F minor, B-flat major, D minor, and F-sharp minor) can be mapped accordingly. 

(The graph illustrates a relationship in which the triads representing the different keys heard in First Meditations are transformed into one another by shifting just one or two voices by step around one or two stationary common tones.) 

The five pieces and six separate keys that make up Sun Ship (B-flat minor, F-sharp minor, C minor, A minor, E minor, and G-sharp minor) are also transformationally related. 

First Meditations shows a degree of motivic integration as well. For instance, the themes to both "Compassion" and "Consequences" are based on little more than the whole-step dyad of scale steps 7 and 1, and the ultimately scalar theme to "Love" is generated from transpositions of a whole-step dyad. 

The listener notices furthermore that the scales on which the themes of First Meditations are based are related by common tones, inclusion, and efficient voice-leading. Below are the scale collections at the foundation of "Love," "Compassion," "Joy," and "Consequences."

[Eb F G Ab Bb C Db]-->[Eb F G Ab Bb C]-->[D F G Bb C]-->[D F G A C]

There are similar common-tone and semitone voice-leading scale relations in Sun Ship, for example between the two hexatonic collections comprising "Attaining" and the diatonic collection of "Dearly Beloved."

[G Ab Bb C D Eb]-->[G A B C D E]-->[G# A B C# D E F#]

Note that the common tones between the first two collections are (G C D), set class (027), and the common tones between the second two collections are (A B D E), or set class (0257). Set class (027) also provides the three-note theme to "Amen," [B E F#], to which [A] is eventually added, making set class (0257). "Attaining" also contains melodic statements of (027) and (0257): 

"Dearly Beloved" too contains a very prominent melodic statement of fourths, which stands in relief to its otherwise completely stepwise theme: 

That melodically salient tritone connects "Dearly Beloved" to "Sun Ship," whose three-note theme [C# D# A] contains nothing more than a tritone and a whole step, the interval content of set class (026). Inverting [D#] about [C#] results in [C# B A], the three-note motive that begins "Dearly Beloved" and germinates into its full, diatonic theme. Alternately, inverting [A] about the axis D-G# (the melodic tritone from "Dearly Beloved," as it happens) results in [C# D# G], the pitches which structurally outline the theme to "Ascent." Its major third interval is filled in with rising semitones referenced in the title of the piece.  

The compositional integration of "First Meditations" and "Sun Ship" through key and motive relationships lends support to Porter's suggestion that Coltrane's late period albums can indeed be heard as an "indivisible whole."