Steve Coleman at the Vanguard Reviewed

Source: DownBeat Magazine.

A few months after alto saxophonist Steve Coleman arrived in New York in 1978, he played regularly at the Village Vanguard on Monday nights with the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra. In the ensuing 37 years, Coleman has generated 29 albums, composed original music for a half-dozen or so bands, done extended “fieldwork” and cultural exchange with musicians around the world, and provided a conceptual framework that has guided luminaries as diverse as Cassandra Wilson and Vijay Iyer. But he has never functioned as a bandleader in the hallowed basement.

This lacuna in Coleman’s c.v. was rectified on Nov. 10, when the saxophonist launched his six-night maiden voyage at the Vanguard with the U.S. debut of a new ensemble, Natal Eclipse, a drummer-less octet for which he assembled long-standing collaborators Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet, Jen Shyu on vocals and Craig Taborn on piano, and relative newcomers Greg Chudzik on bass, Maria Grand on tenor saxophone, Kristin Lee on violin and Rane Moore on clarinet. The latter four all performed on Coleman’s 2015 Pi release, Synovial Joints.