Fire Revisited

Steve Coleman and Five Elements: Steve Coleman (alto sax), Graham Haynes (trumpet), Kelvyn Bell (electric guitar), Geri Allen (synthesizer), Kevin Bruce Harris (electric bass,), Mark Johnson (drums, percussion) and Marvin “Smitty” Smith (drums, percussion). From the album On the Edge of Tomorrow (1986).

Steve Coleman is an American alto saxophonist and composer, founder of the M-Base style. With his technical virtuosity and dedication to musical traditions from all over the world he expands the possibilities of spontaneous playing. Whether solo or with his usual group Steve Coleman and Five Elements, he performs rigorously written compositions as well as complex improvised pieces. His original works combine disciplined rhythmic structures and sophisticated tonal progressions, and explore overlapping metrics to produce emotionally expressive statements.

Coleman started studying violin, but at age 14 he switched to alto saxophone and participated in rhythm and blues and funk bands. He later discovered Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane, and attended Illinois Wesleyan University and Roosevelt University in Chicago. In 1978 he moved to New York, where he worked in big bands such as Thad Jones/Mel Lewis’s, Sam Rivers’s, Slide Hampton’s, Cecil Taylor’s and others. Shortly thereafter he collaborated as a sideman on recordings with Dave Holland, Abbey Lincoln, David Murray, Michael Brecker and Dough Hammond.

In this funky rhythm composition that has no theme, Haynes makes a fluid and well articulated solo. Then the group interprets an arrangement with a choppy tune to give way to Coleman, who plays a few phrases before the same arrangement is repeated. Next Coleman offers a fresh and original discourse, and Allen follows him producing with the synthesizer a high-pitched sound resembling jazz fusion. His melodic line is atypical and peculiar, and the group comes back with the same arrangement for the third time to finish.