Posted on Group:

Mark de Clive Lowe + Friends – Freedom: Celebrating the Music of Pharoah Sanders

Soul Bank Music have released a live concert from 2018 recorded at the Blue Whale in Los Angeles, a tribute to the music of Pharoah Sanders featuring some of the LA jazz scene’s fiercest cats. In the words of de Clive-Lowe, the bandleader on this occasion, the performance served as a celebration of the “(…) music, joy and spirit that the great master-teacher Pharoah Sanders offers the world through his lifelong journey”, an emancipating and spiritual set, underscored by superb musicianship and spiritually motivated playing. The line-up is helmed by de Clive-Lowe on keyboards, Dwight Treble on vocals, Teodross Avery on saxophone, Corbin Jones on bass and sousaphone, Tommaso Cappellato on drums and Carlos Niño on percussion. De Clive Lowe’s trademark electronics and experimental joie de vivre are apparent from the outset. His synthesisers whirr, chug and pulsate throughout the tracks, alongside deft electric and grand piano playing. The music seems unbound by external pressures, merely some of jazz’s top young players channelling a dialogue with Sanders’ influence at the core of their vernacular. Although Sanders’ overarching influence over the music is acknowledged by de Clive Lowe in the liner notes, the group choose not to mimic his style of playing and instead delve into more progressive, effect heavy and technologically inspired styles of playing, interpolating Sanders’ compositions rather than indirectly mimicking them, albeit rooting themselves in the tradition of his playing style.

 

Album highlights include the smoky and uplifting rendition of Thembi, where de Clive Lowe’s excellent piano work swings alongside the groove, anchored by a superb rhythm section and overscored by fluttering soprano saxophone movements. The version of Lonnie Liston Smith’s Astral Travelling sounds just as cosmic and mind melting as the original version, chiming ride cymbals and low-thudding upright bass glitter between coruscating Fender Rhodes. Under the leadership of de Clive Lowe, the band manages to successfully reframe classic Pharoah Sanders songs in a contemporary jazz context, while rekindling the spirituality of Sanders’ compositions to a modern audience. Some of the tracks embrace you, others scream and wail at you in true Pharoah fashion.

Buy the LP HERE

Buy the CD HERE

Listen to the tracks below

Mark de Clive Lowe – Upper Egypt
Mark de Clive Lowe – Elevation
Mark de Clive Lowe – Colors
Mark de Clive Lowe – You’ve Got To Have Freedom
Mark de Clive Lowe – Thembi
Mark de Clive Lowe – Astral Traveling
Mark de Clive Lowe – The Creator Has A Masterplan
Mark de Clive Lowe – Greetings to Saud (Brother McCoy Tyner)
Mark de Clive Lowe – Love Is Everywhere
Mark de Clive Lowe – Mansions World
Mark de Clive Lowe – Ore-se-rere
Mark de Clive Lowe – Memories of Lee Morgan