Miles Davis – Lonely Fire (1970)

Lonely Fire is recorded 27 January 1970 in Columbia Studio B, and appears on the album Big Fun.

Lineup: Miles Davis – trumpet / Wayne Shorter – tenor saxophone / Bennie Maupin – bass clarinet / Khalil Balakrishna – sitar, Indian instruments / Chick Corea – electric piano / Joe Zawinul – electric piano, Farfisa organ / Dave Holland – double bass / Harvey Brooks – Fender bass guitar / Jack DeJohnette – drums / Billy Cobham – drums / Airto Moreira – Indian instruments, percussion

Lloyd Miller – Jazz in Iran 2, on NIRTV (197?)

Lloyd Miller (born 1938) is an American jazz musician and world music expert who is well known for his research work on Persian music and Afghan music. He can play 100 instruments in 15 jazz, ethnic and world music traditions. [source]

For JAZZ IN IRAN 2, Lloyd Miller demonstrated his Oriental Jazz and traditional Iranian music on his prime-time weekly NIRTV programs in Tehran in the 1970s. Here he is joined by a traditional santur player for his arrangement of Gol-e Gandom. Next he plays blues on the oud and then joins the santurist for the traditional mode (dastgah) Shur playing oud and zarb. Then Miller plays the mode Segah in an amazing version of pure traditional santur on retuned piano using santur mallet techniques with his fingers, the first person to correctly render a dastgah without any improper European piano ideas to pollute the tradition. Lastly is Miller’s famous arrangement of Gol-e Gandom where has plays santur in a totally Iranian manner placing it within a modal jazz mono-chordal framework without submitting to any jazz idioms. This was the 1967 performance which initiated Miller’s famous Oriental Jazz concept which soon became a globally sought after vinyl LP of which very few are in existence. The CD of that Oriental Jazz vinyl is available through CD Baby or World Arts on jazzscope.com . (the text on youtube)

[Millers background]

OJF santur BW 72

Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers – Free For All (1964)

Incredibly high energy level. Free For All is composed by Wayne Shorter and appears on the album Free For All, recorded in Van Gelder Studio in February 1964. Yay!

Shorter’s title track is one of the finest moments in the Jazz Messengers’ history. [source]

Lineup: Art Blakey – drums / Cedar Walton – piano / Wayne Shorter – tenor saxophone / Freddie Hubbard – trumpet / Curtis Fuller – trombone / Reggie Workman – bass

David S. Ware Quartet – Freedom Suite I. (2002)

From the album Freedom Suite by David S. Ware Quartet. Recorded on July 13, 2002 at Systems Two Studio, Brooklyn.

Composed by Sonny Rollins, arranged by David S. Ware.
David S. Ware – tenor sax
Matthew Shipp – piano
William Parker – bass
Guillermo E. Brown – drums

Recorded by Jim Anderson

Tracks on album: Freedom Suite Movement 1 / Interlude / Freedom Suite Movement 2 / Freedom Suite Movement 3

Sonny Rollin’s Freedom Suite (first issued on the Riverside album of the same name) is a protest jazz masterpiece, albeit one relegated to a back seat behind works by Charles Mingus, Max Roach, and even John Coltrane by some critics. There are several reasons for this. Despite being inspired by Rollins’ first-hand experience of housing discrimination in New York, it was recorded in early 1958, and released before the Civil Rights Movement reached critical mass nationally.

The upshot is that “The Freedom Suite” is a natural, if overlooked reservoir for tenor saxophonists of David S. Ware’s generation. Obviously Ware has long been well aware of the piece, having studied with Rollins before his mid-70s emergence. Yet it is somewhat surprising for Ware to give the piece a CD length reading, as so little of Rollins’ influence is detectable even in Ware’s earliest recordings (the notable exception being his take on Kurt Weill’s “My Ship” on drummer Andrew Cyrille’s 1978 Black Saint album Metamusician’s Stomp). Instead, Ware quickly established a sound extrapolating the Fire Music nexus of spiritual and visceral intensities, placing little to no stock in Rollins’ romanticism, humour, and interest in pop music. – Bill Shoemaker, The Wire [source]