'Fanfare', from and for GLENN SPEARMAN. with KIDD JORDAN, OLIVER LAKE, ALVIN FIELDER, BRIAN QUEZERGUE, and DARRELL LAVIGNE. Plus: "Sound Section" by the Glenn Spearman Double Trio.
"Glenn was great," Oliver said when we finished this piece at Café Istanbul.
Oct. 6, 2024
‘Fanfare’ is a poem celebrating the Composer, Bandleader, and Tenor Saxophonist GLENN SPEARMAN. I produced two Albums for the Black Saint label with Glenn as leader of Sessions. 1995’s release is titled THE FIELDS and the Band is the Glenn Spearman Double Trio with Glenn and LISLE ELLIS Double Bass and DONALD ROBINSON Drums-Set as his Trio and with LARRY OCHS Tenor and Soprano Saxophone and CHRIS BROWN Piano and WILLIAM WINANT Drums-Set and Percussion as a complimentary, melding Trio. You may be familiar with these musicians. Together as the Double Trio they delivered some of the most dynamic, intense, complex, lyrical and flat-out Fire Music of that decade, I think.
Below is a sample from THE FIELDS, the second half-or-so of the Track “Sound Section.”
FREE WORLDS is the second Album of Glenn’s work that I produced for Black Saint. This year 2000 compilation gathers from four Sessions, with a variety of performers that includes USTAD SALAMAT and his son USTAD SHAFQAT ALI KHAN, the guitarist DHYANI DHARMA MAS, and RAPHE MALIK and MARCO ENEIDI and J. R. ROUTHIER.
FREE WORLDS can be found through the excellent Resource, DISCOGS.
My third Album with Glenn as leader, LET IT GO, came out in 1997 on the Red Toucan label of Quebec—enthusiasts fiery and rigorous there.
RICK LOPEZ has over decades, too, fashioned the most complete SESSIONOGRAPHY for GLENN.
WILLIAM PARKER talked about Glenn in the third of MARYSE’s and my ‘Spiritual as Music’ Hours with William. William said that each of Glenn’s solos in one of their Tin Place gigs made “beautiful portraits” and he spoke of Glenn’s “cosmic fire.”
Glenn, as you may hear in rhe playing of his saxophonist peers KIDD JORDAN and OLIVER LAKE to honor him, and in the playing of ALVIN FIELDER, DARREL LAVIGNE, and BRIAN QUEZERGUE, was/is a towering waterfall and whirlwind of a soul.
What you have in the ‘Video Upload’ below is the WHOLE of ‘Fanfare’ as KIDD, OLIVER, ALVIN, BRIAN, DARRELL and I did it at Café Istanbul on May 1, 2014, our performance part of the Benefit in that JazzFest season for the great Louis Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp that JACKIE HARRIS administers.
The video-stills from our ‘Fanfare’ are by ARISTIDE PHILLIPS. The photo of Glenn and me with our Group XALA in the Elbo Room of San Francisco is by the painter GINA JACUPKE. The photo/portrait of Glenn is by MICHAEL WILDERMAN.
In the ‘Wings Beyond Wings’ video compilation below, ‘Fanfare’ plays between 9:45 and 20:12. Thanks VERY MUCH to Substack for enabling the embed!
FANFARE It kills me that that scream is gone. Breaths. Ship. The galleon Like an Opera Of painted sails. The hero leaping fences! Swinging with a broad sword! Robin Hood and Captain Blood are ... eloquent! The child hears Rings. And the child races through The Cloisters wild and fast, big and strong As Wagner and Klezmer and Willie Mays, All colors roll in the Bronx, Music's Parade changing by the minute. He is: Breathing in pageants! Breathing in tights of Technicolor-- Breathing in Robeson, breathing in Rosenbergs-- Breathing in Jews, Poles, Canucka and Indians Elsewhere and othermore-- Breathing in corkscrews of perplex To a boy's heart, Mother's young god Tossed and turned by the lash of lack. That mother's hand held grows smaller in his own. Go West! A new home, a new man, To be made in the Golden State! Race and play and hit hard As Jim Brown, Lee Calhoun, the magnificent Ali! With King, Malcolm, and Huey, Jut your Black self out proud. Yet--still--ever-- More, the voices, Notes--tremendous as they are inchoate-- Churn up from within--wild stars and moon suites-- All-out and full sprint-- Toward the opening field of Free. All might come out of a horn-- A flood and purging and a plenty-- Hannibal conquests, Beethoven breakthroughs-- Frank Wright!-- Frank Wright and Jimmy Lyons! Monet's lilies and lines sure as Max Planck's-- If you could blow your Horn and Scores strong enough. A life for art names its price. Say that twice. A life for Art names its Price. Two years turn to five, then to twenty, Twenty five years Of three to six hours of playing per day. Well then: Stay poor. For if you would love artists' Love-- Give the truths of your self-- Roll with wounds' shifts And rise to each figment-- Tongue each warm teat and mouth-- Try Isolde with Legba and Keep stepping with Pushkin-- Greet and beat time with the demons Who dance you wide-eyed from sleep And practice till lips bleed-- You must also, it's said, Seek relief from the Rock And the racking money-jungle. Let a friend tug your coat. Fly paths of ancestors! Fly like Charlie, Sonny, Sonny, S.T., DeQuincey, Burroughs, ... Reflect heiroglyphs' sky-scripts Like shamen become trees. Fly on Faust's chariot Through Earwicker's leaves-- Know how Cecil's incandescent Sheets explode upon Bach, Berg, Monk and Hard Bop-- Dive into the waterfall and its light Despite the junkie's ugly works.... Find and deliver, find and deliver, Each shading and timbre-- Ev'ry last shudder and glory-- Of that awesome and so slighted story That's yours, too, to tell. Be the one! Be a one! Be another one Of cleansing truths and robust welcome (Tossed and turned by loves and lacks) Your devotion your voice-- Your own sweet high relief-- Your home too the Spheres Out there With and beyond Stars, Seas and even Waterfalls. Glenn was too much alive To be imagined past. Holes and gaps, seeds and fruits, Are left where and when Such a force has gone. Glenn's smile--his laugh-- His lounging in his Winter weight-- His flexing in his Summer sheen-- His booms and "Bawps!"-- His hugs and headlong plans-- His "Hey-ay!" over the phone-- His eclectic knowledge and honey-dripping Sensitivity-- His "Bee-dee-ba-da-ya-yip!"-- His tenderness for wife and child And wives and children-- His parties with Shantee-- All of that and like that Will continue Even though Glenn won't be around For the next session over thirty years ahead. Breaths. Ship. The galleon like an opera Of painted sails. The 'Fields Before The Ram' (Ram's horn blowing life into a desert---- The shoulders straight to clear hurdles-- The hero jumping off on a bandstand-- The vessel and bringer of dreams, Another messenger-- "I'd heard you play," Miya said, "but never felt it behind me before." The Light Brigade turned By a Geronimo of arrows from the Sun. It kills me, that That scream and blare And caresses like strokes beneath a waterfall Are still so epic here. First version October 1998
