For a man leading a quartet bearing one of the most distinguished names in jazz, Ravi Coltrane can be a self-effacing presence. John Coltrane’s saxophonist son puts a clear distance between his own work and his late father’s by often playing spry and subtly crafted lines in a murmur rather than unleashing cloudbursts of sound, and mixing originals with those of his personal heroes and the contributions of exceptional sidemen. The saxophonist’s current band, including the gifted Cuban pianist David Virelles, began a short UK tour this week with two nights at Ronnie Scott’s.
Coltrane’s solos on the first night simmered with quiet conviction. There were glimpses of the pithiness of Wayne Shorter, the freewheeling zest of Ornette Coleman, his father’s beseeching soulfulness, the rhythmic notions of Steve Coleman, and plenty more. But he was often happy to step into the wings and admire his trio, particularly the resourceful Virelles, whose sound can evoke the swell of drums or choirs, but on this occasion was a striking rewrite of the textbook of postbop piano.
On Ornette Coleman’s Bird Food, Coltrane delayed the springy freebop melody with an airily roundabout intro shared with drummer Johnathan Blake, before sweeping into tenor-sax swing over constant groove-shifts, and Virelles’s prodding chords and split-second comebacks to his phrasing. Blake’s restlessly polyrhythmic playing and Dezron Douglas’s muscular bassline slipped and skidded under Coltrane’s soprano-sax feature on his own Marilyn and Tammy (from the fine Spirit Fiction album), and Virelles mixed patient chording and bright, jangling Herbie Hancock-like figures on Paul Motian’s Endless. With a torrent of hard-punctuated rhythmic figures, wandering chords and crisply struck runs, the pianist also set up an astonishing drum climax on the catchily hook-driven Homeward Bound – a testament both to this versatile drummer’s warp-speed virtuosity and his composing skills.
• At Howard Assembly Room, Leeds, on 11 March. Box office: 0844 848 2720. Then touring.
