John Coltrane

YouTube has removed limits on uploads from my account! Here is a complete set (~30 minutes) of saxophone duos with Lucas Pino, recorded with my new mobile rig.

Zack Lipton - Tenor Saxophone, Composer
Lucas Pino - Tenor Saxophone

Set:
"Since I Became Stupid" - (Zachary Lipton ©Point14 2011)
"Giant Steps" - (John Coltrane)
"Hurricane Suite" - (Zachary Lipton @Point14 2011)
"Skylark" - (Hoagy Carmichael)

Giant Steps feat. Zack Lipton & Lucas Pino
August 4th, 2011

I love music. I have loved music for as long as I have played it, and even before then. As a child learning to fundamentals of the saxophone and encountering jazz, this love manifested as a single-minded devotion. Music was not simply a passion, a fascination, and an avenue to self-expression. My love for music was religious; music was sacred. If someone quoted John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” over a corny funk tune, it was not simply heavy-handed and distasteful; it was sacrilegious. Music was not just an art; it was a spiritual experience, and it demanded not only serious study, but reverence.

As a high schooler, I subscribed earnestly to this notion of jazz musician as hero. John Coltrane was this master samurai who honed his talent to honorably push forward the musical zeitgeist into a new realm of consciousness. He was a messiah who would bring about change on earth through the comprehension of his improvisations, the study of his harmonic theories, the inspiration of his dedication. Jazz music was serious business, and had to be treated as such. The Bad Plus, at the time a newly formed jazz trio with a penchant for interpreting pop anthems, was heretical. They dishonored jazz - I thought then.

Recently, a friend pointed me towards an edition of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick in which the preface contained a number of critical reviews contemporary to the book’s writing. Not surprisingly the critical response was overwhelmingly negative. Naturally, my first inclination was to pooh-pooh the critics and lament their failure to recognize something great in its time. But another, more important idea struck me.