Mars Williams presents An Ayler Xmas - The Divine Peacemaker Plays Dreidel In Frightful Weather
I'm getting this out-of-its-tree music under the tree for the morning, so I hope you are ready for something to really put the X factor in Xmas.
Today we feature two dearly departed reedmelters, or more accurately we feature one sax god paying tribute to another from the further past, in the process transmuting the ancestor's already-devotional songs into a particularly warped, yet somehow totally appropriate, celebration.
This was a thing for over a decade, but Mars Williams didn't start releasing them as live albums until 2017. There was one issued of several of them up to the 2020 event.
I guess the music of Albert Ayler has a kind of Christmas feel to it in some subsurface sort of way to begin with, but woven into medleys that go from Let It Snow to Divine Peacemaker in seamless, almost unconscious fashion really highlights the territorial similarities.
Don't expect a maelstrom skronkfest where someone is overblowing sheets of sound so savage that they accidentally shoot their reed out of their horn and decapitate the soundman, either, although there are sufficient moments of that. No, not the actual bloodshed. A bit of sheets o'skronk, though.
Some of it is actually quite lyrical and soothing, if you can believe it.
There's a lot of toy and little percussion instruments going on too, enough to make the average Art Ensemble of Chicago concert look paltry in that regard.
Initially I remastered the 2022 one, but since Mars was injured for that and couldn't play saxophone without his face falling off, I added the 2021 one in which he is at full blowtorch.
Unfortunately the 2022 performance of this stuff was the last, as Mars Williams fell ill in 2023 and eventually passed just before Thanksgiving of that year.
He passed from a rare form of cancer after a career backing a million superstars of various aesthetic ilks and doing his own things, like these annual Xmas joints.
It's been 55 years, and nobody still has any inkling of how Albert Ayler -- beyond argument, one of the most influential and singular musicians in American history -- got in the East River, face down.
It doesn't really matter, as the music is forever, there will never be a more individual and passionate player than he anyhow.
These performances are both exceptionally captured and would slot right in to the established, sequential series as official releases, if you ask me.
So fasten your Santa belts, as the sleigh screeches to a halt and we arrive, like a holy herd of acid reindeer, at an Albert Ayler Xmas!
Mars Williams presents "An Ayler Xmas"
Lawndale Art Center
Houston, Texas USA
11.29.2021
422 MB FLAC/link below
634 MB FLAC/direct link to both shows
I figure almost three hours of this stuff oughta yuletide everybody over until New Year's Eve, so deck the halls with Free Jazz ornaments and boughs of howling horns, I say!
I shall return as the year ends with one more missive, designed to stroke your smoke straight outta Oakland, but I wanted to wish all a Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukah (they start the same day this year) and acknowledge any other maypoles you might be dancing around. These shows'll help you stay snug in those mangers, so be safe from dangers -- it's OK to talk to strangers -- and soak up some holiday Jazz game changers!!!--J.
