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alice coltrane & co

Saturday night I saw Alice Coltrane play Hill, with son Ravi on saxaphones, Roy Haynes on drums, and Charlie Haden on bass. The latter three were amazing, and worth the price of admission on their own. I'm still not much of an Alice Coltrane fan, though. Every solo sounded a bit the same to me. I think the one piece I sort of liked was the second they played, some Indian song I didn't know, where I could at least hear her treating the melody a little.

Roy Haynes is 81, and extremely energetic, tasteful, musical, precise.... Maybe playing the drums every day is the secret to eternal youth. Charlie Haden also sounded wonderful when I could hear him; Mrs. Coltrane's habit of leaning on bass pedal points tended to drown him out a bit. And Ravi sounded great too. It's obvious that he grew up listening to a lot of Cotrane records....