Once Charles Tolliver got his foot in the door at UC Santa Cruz he was determined to pull John Coltrane’s music in with him.
A brilliant trumpeter who came of age on the New York scene in the early 1960s, when Coltrane was in the midst of recording a series of epochal albums for the newly formed Impulse! label, Tolliver has spent the past three months ensconced in Santa Cruz, where he’s the first jazz artist-in-resident in the history of the college’s music department.
Upon accepting the position, he seized the opportunity to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Coltrane’s Impulse! debut “Africa/Brass,” an album that upon its Sept. 1, 1961 release “left jazz critics behind, as Coltrane’s music often did,” writes Grammy Award-winning journalist Ashly Kahn in “The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records.”
“It was underwhelming to critics at the time,” Tolliver said, noting that “Crescent” and “A Love Supreme,” both recorded in 1964, are often held up as Coltrane’s masterpieces. “But ‘Africa/Brass’ certainly belongs in the same category.”
Marked by modal themes with minimal harmonic movement, surging rhythms, and densely layered brass orchestrations by Coltrane’s fellow musical explorer and sometime bandmate Eric Dolphy, “Africa/Brass” was a singular, ambitious experiment that featured up to 21 musicians. For the culmination of his residency, Tolliver is directing the West Coast premiere of the work in its entirety Dec. 4 at the UCSC Theater Arts Center’s Mainstage.
Presented by the Music Department and performed by the UCSC Jazz Big Band directed by Charles Hamilton, the sold out production features more than a dozen student musicians, several professional ringers (including veteran drummer Akira Tana), and choral arrangements that expand on the original work.
Tolliver first started reconstructing the music for “Africa/Brass” back in 1998, when Reggie Workman, Coltrane’s primary bassist throughout 1961, recruited him to re-create the original arrangements. Since Dolphy’s charts had been lost decades before, “It had to be done from scratch, and it took about three months doing nothing else,” Tolliver said. “It took about another four months to do the choir,” an idea suggested by Workman.
Tolliver used the lyrics for “Greensleeves” and “Song of the Underground Railroad,” traditional songs “that really take on a whole other life,” Tolliver said. “It’s a spectacular musical journey with the choir added on.”
Workman and Tolliver premiered the new “Africa/Brass” in 1998, though the project got a lot more attention in 2011 when Tolliver marked the album’s 50th anniversary with tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp. The following year pianist McCoy Tyner, who played on “Africa/Brass” and helped craft the album’s arrangements, presented the music at the Blue Note in New York with Tolliver’s big band.
The album represented a major leap for Coltrane, who was venturing out on his own as a bandleader after five years with Miles Davis. He was looking for a new label upon the completion of his Atlantic Records contract at the end of 1960. Signing with Impulse!, the label he recorded for until his death at 40 in 1967, Coltrane had originally planned to make “Africa/Brass” with saxophonist Oliver Nelson, an inventive but far more conventional arranger than Dolphy. When Nelson was suddenly unavailable for the project Dolphy stepped in and created a thick, kinetic mesh of low brass that Coltrane rode like an ever-cresting wave.
The album made a deep impression on Tolliver, who was getting ready to drop his pharmacy major at Howard University and try his luck in New York as a musician. He made his recording debut as a leader on the 1965 Impulse! compilation “The New Wave in Jazz,” an album that also included tracks by Coltrane, Archie Shepp, and Albert Ayler.
One of the most original trumpeters on the scene, he didn’t start recording his own music regularly until 1971 when he and pianist Stanley Cowell founded the label Strata-East (which was the subject of a livestreamed 50th anniversary celebration last June).
Though he’s released several acclaimed albums in the past 15 years, Tolliver has been a scarce presence on the West Coast, aside from a memorable year in the L.A.-based Gerald Wilson Orchestra in 1966-67.
“You could say I was underwhelming outside of New York City,” Tolliver said with a wry chuckle.
Invited to Santa Cruz by Karlton Hester, UCSC’s director of jazz studies, Tolliver has been teaching a class on spontaneous composition and jazz music theory. While the “Africa/Brass” presentation started with Charles Hamilton’s jazz ensemble, the production has turned into an epic journey itself with a steadily expanding cast.
“He had the band play the piece and said ‘this is good, but it’s not enough,’” said Hamilton, who’s thrived in the years since retiring from his quarter-century tenure as the director of Berkeley High’s jazz program.
“I told my department chair this thing is growing. I’ve got all these people and he says he still needs more. We’ve ended up with about 20 singers. We’re way over our budget, but we added a section for people to contribute. Charles is the driving force. This has taken on a life of its own.”
Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.
CHARLES TOLLIVER
Presents John Coltrane’s “Africa/Brass” at 60
When: 7:30 p.m. Dec. 4
Where: UC Santa Cruz Theater Arts Center
Tickets: $5-$30; ucsctickets.universitytickets.com
