Don Cherry - Live At Cafe Montmartre 1966 volume two

ESP 4043

Trumpeter-composer Don Cherry’s multinational mid-sixties quintet created a body of work with an influence localized to the period that is still being unpacked. With itinerant tenorman Gato Barbieri, vibraphonist Karl Berger, drummer Aldo Romano and a rotating cast of bassists, the group ping-ponged between Scandinavia, France and the United States throughout their short existence. This second volume of recordings captured live at Copenhagen’s Café Montmartre with bassist Bo Stief is particularly interesting, for its contents go beyond the usual renditions of the “Complete Communion” suite and gives one a clearer picture of the breadth of their repertoire.

One of the crucial aspects of this recording is the inclusion of a suite of Albert Ayler tunes, brought from the Ayler-Cherry quartet of two years earlier. The mutual influence isn’t sufficiently talked about, for not only were Cherry’s pieces recorded by the quartet and at least one in Ayler’s later bands (“D.C.,” on Spirits Rejoice, ESP 1020), but the long form suite format of thematic elements heralded from improvisational quotes is something that both composers used heavily in their work of the period. One has only to place Bells alongside Complete Communion to see how forms occur from ragtag energy. Of course, Barbieri is sufficiently different from Ayler as a front line partner; rather than folksy Swedish and blues melodies, he’s bubbling with buzzing explosions, unbridled Pharoah-isms and a Latin edge. Still, it’s enchanting to hear him approach “Ghosts” and “Mothers” with clean and terse verbiage, skimming over the top where Ayler would’ve dug in deep.

The samba “Orfeu Negro” is given a reading in keeping with the quintet’s muse, Barbieri’s splitting growls braced with candlelit keen as Cherry and Berger take brittle potshots, picking the tune apart. Cherry’s solo is Moorish in its ken, brief and leading into one of the “Togetherness” fragments, coiled horn song firing aloft for Berger’s metallic droplets. The stories are legion of Cherry’s walks around European cities with a transistor radio in his hand, listening to everything he could get his ears on. Thus, it’s no surprise that a piece from Black Orpheus would make its way into the band’s wooly and all-encompassing suites. For followers of 1960s improvised music and of Don Cherry’s art, the Montmartre recordings are essential.

~ Clifford Allen