Kudos to Richard Scheinin for his fresh article in the New York Times, “How Sam Rivers and Studio Rivbea Supercharged ’70s Jazz in New York.”
I arrived in NYC in 1991, so I missed the loft scene, and, indeed, never heard very much of a kind of ‘70’s to ‘80’s no-holds-barred thing live. Music and concepts from Blythe; Braxton; Threadgill; Newton; Adams/Pullen; at least two dozen others.
The records are there, the records are great, but I wonder if some of the videos do a better job of capturing the ancient-to-the-future aesthetic.
Sam Rivers & The RivBea Orchestra - North Sea Jazz Festival 1979
Sam Rivers - reeds, flute
Chico Freeman - tenor, flute
Ricky Ford - tenor, flute
Steve Coleman - alto, flute
John Purcell - baritone, flute
Frank Gordon - trumpet
Oliver Beener - trumpet
Jack Walrath - trumpet
George Lewis - trombone
Charles Stephens - trombone
Joe Daley - tuba, euphonium
Don Pullen - piano
Dave Holland - bass
Warren Smith - drums
Big band music with extended passages of free form improvising plus detailed ensemble passages and burning solos from an all-star cast.
My favorite Sam Rivers tenor solo is on “Extras,” track one from Tony Williams’s masterpiece Spring. Wayne Shorter takes the first solo, open, busy, gorgeous. Gary Peacock is hot in the mix. Four minutes in, Rivers enters, soft and quiet: his tenor sounds like a clarinet. Peacock, Williams, and Rivers find each other, and suddenly the music is a modal blues waltz — before atomizing it all and returning back to the churn.
Ricky Ford is kind of an underrated cat, looking at 80s / 90s discography, tons of killing high profile stuff. It looks like he moved to Europe and perhaps slowed his output?