SHABAKA HUTCHINGS
Hackney Church, London, December 8 The saxophone sensei signs o with A Love Supreme
FOR the last decade or so, the strident sound of Shabaka Hutchings’ tenor sax has spearheaded the British jazz renaissance. His in uential bands The Comet Is Coming and Sons Of Kemet have broken new ground while consistently providing a thrilling live experience. So there was some disappointment earlier this year when Hutchings announced that he was disbanding both groups and giving up the saxophone in order to concentrate on mastering the shakuhachi ute, among other wind instruments.
By now, we’ve all heard André 3000’s ute album. Is there a similar danger of Hutchings abandoning something he’s really good at in favour of making so-so New Age music? Judging by the calm intensity with which he approaches his last ever saxophone show, we needn’t worry – nobody, aer all, attempts the music of John Coltrane on a whim. “It’s a sacrice,” says Hutchings, explaining his decision from the stage. “Sacrices are dicult, but they’re what’s needed to transition.”
A Love Supreme might initially seem like one of those foundational texts that shouldn’t be messed with, but Coltrane himself never saw it as etched in stone. The day aer he’d recorded the quartet version we all know and revere, he went back in and attempted it as a sextet, with Archie Shepp on second sax; a year later, he’d team up with Pharoah Sanders in Seattle to take the material further out. Hutchings opts for an even more unorthodox ensemble: no piano, one electric guitar, two basses and four of the nest drummers on the UK scene (Tom Skinner, Moses Boyd, Eddie Hick and Jas Kayser).
It’s clear from the outset – the opening 30 seconds of
“Acknowledgement” expanded into a blissful ve-minute reverie – that Hutchings sees A Love Supreme as a blueprint rather than a sacred text. For long periods of the show he doesn’t even play the saxophone, standing respectfully to one side as Dave Okumu takes a dreamy guitar solo, or demonstrating exactly how he intends to wring something worthwhile from his collection of utes and pipes on his new album, due in the spring. But when he does bust out one of Coltrane’s familiar sax melodies, the eect is pure exultance. It’s a lyrical, re ective tone we haven’t oen heard from Hutchings in his urgency to keep pushing things forward, yet still delivered with his trademark power and conviction.
He’s tried the four drummers thing before, in a couple of special Sons Of Kemet XL shows, where the barrage of rhythm became a psychedelic blur of sound. Here they are more restrained, until the time comes to turn Elvin Jones’ drum solo at the beginning of “Pursuance” into a mesmerising, multi-limbed groove. Then gradually they all drop out again, leaving Hutchings to scale the tune’s dizzying peaks alone, shards of harmonics rebounding o the walls in all directions.
He achieves these moments of breathtaking virtuosity without showing o. As with Coltrane, it’s purely about trying to access another plane and bring everyone with him. He punctuates the music with calls for forgiveness, mercy, compassion and peace; these ideals inform a deeply moving “Psalm”, which he ends by repeating the nal motif over and over until he eventually stops blowing notes and lets his breath run through the sax one last time. It’s an emotional farewell – except of course he can’t resist an encore (he also manages to slip in one more ‘last ever’ sax show, at Cafe Oto a few days later). New vistas await, but you suspect he won’t be able to stay away forever.