EUGENE– John Coltrane stepped off the planet in 1967, and J.S. Bach two centuries earlier, in 1750. Both deaths created profound losses in the music world, and both men left profound music. But let’s be grateful that poet and jazz critic A.B. Spellman, 89, who wrote “Dear John Coltrane” for the saxophone master in his Things I Must Have Known volume (Coffeehouse Press, 2008) is still alive and reading. 

He eloquently recited that poem from the middle of the stage July 12 in the Hult Center’s 495-seat Soreng Theater in Eugene as part of the Oregon Bach Festival performance of Jeff Scott’s Passion for Bach and Coltrane. The event was 90 percent sold out. There was no saxophone, but the concert was supremely beautiful and audaciously integrated.

Spellman, whose daughter Toyin Spellman-Diaz was an oboist until recently in the 27-year-old Imani Winds, was surrounded by the Harlem Quartet on strings, Imani Winds quintet, and a trio with pianist Alex Brown, bassist Edward Perez and drummer Neal Smith. 

The last stanza of Spellman’s “Dear John Coltrane” poem speaks to the gianthood of Coltrane and Bach:

if I believed in heaven I would ask
if you and bach ever swap infinite fours
& jam the sound that light makes
going & coming, & if you exchange maps
to those exclusive clouds you travel thru
& do you give them names?

You can’t get better than that. Bach and Coltrane? Imani Winds and Harlem Quartet? And A.B. Spellman, a former jazz critic with a jazzy dramatic voice, reading his own work?

The musical piece was written by Imani Winds’ composer and French horn player Jeff Scott – though he did not play in this concert – and was based on Spellman’s poems, which Spellman read throughout, sometimes without music, sometimes accompanied by it. The piece was finished in 2014 and premiered that year with pretty much the same musicians who were in Eugene and with Spellman. Then the group recorded it and it won a Grammy in the Classical Compendium category in 2024. 

Sponsor

Scott was in his element. He always wanted to put music and poetry together, and here was his chance. He calls his compositions on his website “urban classical music, rooted in European tradition and informed by my African American culture. My mission is to broaden the scope of American music theory and composition, with the intention of introducing performers, teachers, students and audiences to the richness and value of our very own American music.”

For me the poetry was as good as the music, which was frontloaded with Bach, including the “Goldberg Variation 13” (there are 30 variations) and a reorchestrated “Aria” from the “Goldberg Variations,” but the eight-movement piece was more thoroughly infused with Coltrane’s work, which allowed stupendous improvisations from the musicians. They were all astounding, but the last, an extended improv by Imani Winds’ clarinetist Mark Dover, was even more astounding. Bach’s counterpoint is much like jazz improv, or the other way around.

Coltrane’s masterpiece A Love Supreme, which he wrote two years before his death, is a recurring theme throughout the piece. At the end, “Acknowledgement,” a new arrangement of the Coltrane composition of the same name, turned the music on its head, University of Oregon professor of jazz and popular music and professional jazz musician Sean Peterson wrote in the accompanying program notes. The first movement becomes the last, with the musicians chanting, “A Love Supreme.” Spellman’s “Death Poem,” which he turned upside down, echoes the music’s reversal. He switches the order of life and death, starting with death and ending with birth and hope. 

Another saxophonist, bebop artist Charlie Parker, is often compared to Bach for his understanding of counterpoint and harmony and use of patterns in complex riffs and improvised passages.

“Parker’s playing is `Baroque’ insofar as he heavily ornaments his lines,” as musicologist Peterson explains. “Also, the heavy use of scales and arpeggios to build his lines is like a lot of European Baroque music, in general. European Baroque music relied more on improvisation than concert music today tends to, so there is a connection to jazz in general rather than to Parker specifically.

“Interestingly, Bach was less of an innovator and more of a high point of Baroque style (albeit with an unconventional, idiosyncratic approach), working at the end of the dominance of Baroque styles, whereas Parker was absolutely an innovator, working at the beginning of bebop, the very tip of that spear. Most would argue his work constitutes the high point of bebop style. “

Coltrane and Bach, forever reaching for God, especially as Coltrane fought and withdrew from his alcohol and drug addiction, are partners in spirit and legacy. As many musicians, artists, critics, and listeners say about Bach’s and Coltrane’s music, it is transformative. Reconstructed by Scott with the moving, well-crafted and simply stated Spellman poems giving it unity, the concert was a high point in Oregon Bach Festival’s season and history.

Sponsor