Oliver Lake is a marvelous artist. He’s a painter and poet of astonishing evocations and collages as well as the creator of memorable, paths-making music with the World Saxophone Quartet (with Hamiet Bluiett, Julius Hemphill, and David Murray at the group’s outset); with the Trio of Andrew Cyrille, Reggie Workman, and himself; and with numerous, often 

international collaborations. He’s given us over 30 albums as leader, including 1991's Virtual Reality / Total Escapism, their range a visionary's

and a devotee's (1) His website is a wonderland. (2)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today, June 26, the Vision Festival (3) honors Oliver Lake with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Performances outdoors at La Plaza The Clemente (4) offer tremendous riches. They start at 4:00 and last past 9:00 in the New York City night. The forecast is for bee-you-ti-ful--mid-80's, calm sky.

Go there on 107 Suffolk if you can. Live-streaming is also available. 

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In 2014 I performed with Kidd Jordan, Oliver, Alvin Fielder, Darrell Lavigne and Brian Quezergue in that Spring’s benefit for Jackie Harris’ Louis Satchmo Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp. The show was May 1 in Chuck Perkins’ Café Istanbul during middle of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. We worked with a poem of mine in tribute to another profound and visionary composer and saxophonist, Glenn Spearman. Oliver knew Glenn in 1970s’ Paris. Kidd knew Glenn from Glenn’s playing with Cecil Taylor, William Parker, Raphe Malik, and more.

 

Glenn—who left us due to colon cancer at age 51 in 1998—remains one of my closest, dearest and most inspiring collaborators, as this interview by Glenn Ito for All About Jazz tries to convey. (5)

 

None of the musicians had heard a word of the poem before we hit that night at Café Istanbul. Aristide Phillips recorded the performance with his Sony Pro. It can be seen between 9:45 and 22:00 of the YouTube compilation “Wings beyond Wings.”

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Over the past month I’ve gone though the audio of this ‘Fanfare’

and adjusted volumes and done other editing second-by-second.

This assuredly obsessive process I call with a smile “the Fine-Tooth-Comber.” The FTC reference is to Ocean-wave surfing along with Pointillism. The process' intention always is to bring out the amazing sensitivity and prowess that can emerge among improvising musicians.

 

So, today, a Playlist offering to Kidd, Glenn and Oliver, accompanied by images, links and notes. You can hear the three tracks on Bandcamp.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. “Fanfare’, a tribute to Glenn, live at Café Istanbul with Kidd, Oliver, Alvin, Darrell and Brian.

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2. ‘About Reinaldo, Mourning and Outrage’, a poem with Kidd and Morikeba Kouyaté in tribute to Reinaldo Arana, co-founder in the middle 1980s of a pioneering Community Garden between Avenues B and C on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. ’About Reinaldo’ also got an Fine Tooth Comber process, so that the recording might better represent its subject, the AIDS victim Reinaldo, and Kidd’s and Morikeba’s artistry. “About Reinaldo, …’ is one track on my June 2022 album LOVE OVER WAR.

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3. ‘The Skin She Bears’, recorded in 1995 at Guerilla Euphonics in Oakland, CA with Glenn Spearman, Donald Robinson and J. R. Routhier and with Josh Heller and Myles Boisen as engineers. ‘The Skin She Bears’ came to me whole, first thing in my last Saturday morning at  New Orleans’ 1992

U. S. Olympic Track & Field Trials, pouring out as I awoke at Tom-and-Annette’s. Earlier that week of June 1992  I’d visited a friend from Detroit, Toni, and heard her accounts of how New Orleans in that Crack-invasion year had dealt her shocks unexpectedly beyond her study of Marie Laveau. ‘Somebody was murdered’ in Toni’s living-room. ‘The Skin She Bears’ is part of an unreleased album titled Flowers Smell Of Gasoline.

 

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Today’s piece closes with a video-still (Maryse on the camera again!) of Kidd and his daughters Rachel and Stephanie breaking up at news that his monetrary award from JAMBAR ‘Organic Artisan Energy Bars’ is meant so that he “can go away to Brasil.”

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And photos of Kidd receiving the so-deserved Proclamation by the City of New Orleans and its City Council that May 5, 2022. Now his birthday (87 in 2022) will forever be known as Kidd Jordan Day in New Orleans and the State of Louisiana. (Thank YOU, Oliver Thomas and Lena and Diedre of your Office.)