• National Sawdust (map)
  • 80 North 6th St.
  • Brooklyn, NY 11249

tickets available here

Ascension, John Coltrane’s free jazz clarion call from 1966, is a watershed of imagination for this program, curated by myself and Christopher Rountree. This production retreads the architectural and textural forces at play in Coltrane’s seminal work—heterophonic clouds created by a virtuosic front line (seven trumpets and saxophones) alternating with driving solo passages, a multi-headed monster of a rhythm section that for 40 uninterrupted minutes consistently reworks conceptions of time and meter, an astounding convergence of harmony and melody through near-cacophony —in an entirely different context, engaging with Coltrane's influence through a patchwork of genres and musical approaches. Celestial music, religious music, free jazz and the avant garde, clash and resonate with bold arrangements, reinterpretations and juxtapositions of music by J.S. Bach, Jen Hill, Guillaume de Machaut, Giacinto Scelsi, Ron Wiltrout, John Coltrane and Ted Hearne (among others) in a 75-minute panoply of sound and (re)context.