Ravi Coltrane
Spirit Fiction
Release Date: Jun 19, 2012
Genre(s): Jazz
Record label: Blue Note
Music Critic Score
How the Music Critic Score works
Buy Spirit Fiction from Amazon
Album Review: Spirit Fiction by Ravi Coltrane
Great, Based on 5 Critics
Based on rating 8/10
Despite the metaphysical suggestion in Spirit Fiction's title, this is Ravi Coltrane's most cerebral, process-oriented recording to date. This does not mean, however, that his debut offering for Blue Note Records is dry or academic. There is an abundance of emotion and sensual detail, most of it expressed gently, with the confidence -- and authority -- of a veteran bandleader.
Based on rating 4/5
Acareer on the saxophone with one of the most freethinking saxophonists in music history for a father has to be a tough call. Now 46, Ravi Coltrane, son of John, has often chosen to be a sympathetic sideman rather than the boss. But his Blue Note Records debut as a leader feels like a giant step. The tracks are split between two groups (a quartet with Luis Perdomo on piano, and a superb quintet with Geri Allen at the keys, and Ralph Alessi on trumpet), playing an arrestingly original postbop repertoire, plus covers of pieces by Ornette Coleman and Paul Motian.
Based on rating 7/10
When it comes to Ravi Coltrane, the term “well schooled” might come across as an understatement. Yes, this is John Coltrane’s son that we are talking about, a fact that has been firmly established and noted by the wider jazz community over the last fifteen years. This community has graciously granted him his own right to fly, and it is well-deserved.
Opinion: Very Good
PATTI SMITH “Banga” (Columbia) “Banga,” Patti Smith’s first album of new songs since 2004, sets out to dissolve boundaries: between nations, between past and present, between speech and song, between art and life, between her band and fellow musicians. Like her other albums it juxtaposes rockers, lullabies, elegies, incantations, love songs and myths in the making. At 65 she presents herself unburdened by age.
Opinion: Very Good
Jazz saxophonist evokes his family's fine reputation on this new LP. Marcus J. Moore 2012. Yes, Ravi Coltrane is related to those Coltranes. His mother was Alice, the legendary jazz pianist whose sweeping melodies injected ambient blots into the overtly abstract genre. His father, John, was the ….
'Spirit Fiction'
is available now