A Far-Ranging Tribute to Coltrane

The San Francisco Jazz Festival kicked off its 19th season Wednesday night at the Masonic Auditorium with “A Love Supreme: John Coltrane 75th Anniversary Celebration.” With Tommy Flanagan, McCoy Tyner and Pharoah Sanders as the headliners, the program encompassed three phases in the career of the tenor saxophone jazz icon.

One suspects that Coltrane, who was always a helpful guide to young players, would have been equally impressed by the pre-concert performance of the SFJAZZ All-Star High School Ensemble. This talented collection of Bay Area high school musicians, playing with irrepressible enthusiasm in the vestibule of the auditorium, offered entertaining testimony to the continuing persistence of the creative spirit in the post-Coltrane generations of players.

The main program was opened by Flanagan, everyone’s favorite bebop pianist, present in the rhythm section when Coltrane recorded his classic “Giant Steps” and the lovely--and equally classic--”Naima.” Flanagan, working with bassist Peter Washington and drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath, revisited both tunes, as well as Coltrane’s “Mr. P.C.,” a tribute to bassist Paul Chambers.

Although his fingers didn’t quite possess the fleetness of former years, Flanagan played with his familiar amalgam of musical elegance and rhythmic swing. And he couldn’t have asked for better companions than Washington and Heath, both of whom invested the music with similarly subtle articulation--understated but simmering with beneath-the-surface heat.

Tyner performed, as he often has recently, as a soloist. A vastly different player from the years when he was part of what is generally viewed as the essential Coltrane quartet (with bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones), Tyner has stretched his musical wings widely. Playing mostly originals, with a few of the lesser-known numbers explored with Coltrane, he was alternately rhapsodic and light-hearted, tossing snatches of stride into passages drenched with memories of Rachmaninoff.

In any other pianist, the potpourri of styles might have seemed self-conscious and superficial. But in Tyner’s gifted hands, the set was magical, the product of a musical imagination that has used the launch pad of the Coltrane years to rocket into his own unique musical world.

Not quite the same can be said for Sanders, who was present in the final Coltrane years, during a period when the music became more meditative, as well as more exploratory. Searching for solutions that did not arrive with his far-reaching examinations of harmony, Coltrane passionately sought out other music--from India and Africa--in his pursuit of musical truth.

Sanders, a young Coltrane acolyte in the ‘60s, joined in the adventure, often so captivated by it that his playing was a virtual clone of Coltrane’s. Performing “My Favorite Things” in this program, the resemblance was appealing, if only as a recollection of the enchanted original.

But in his other playing, Sanders too often stretched his solos well past the point of productivity. He would have done better to have remained more firmly within the successful, personal musical orbit that he has established for himself over the past decade.

For the packed house, however, the overall program was the perfect sendoff for a week and a half of events--27 concerts in 12 venues--as the San Francisco Jazz Festival once again laid claim to its vital role as one of America’s premier cultural events.