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Multi-instrumentalist Donald Rafael Garrett is best known for his clarinet and bass work on four recordings, Om, Kulu Se Mama, Selflessness and Live in Seattle with John Coltrane, although he collaborated with a great number of free jazz musicians and improvisers during the 1960s and '70s. Born in 1932 in Arkansas, Garrett was raised in Chicago, IL. While still in high school, he studied first clarinet, and then also bass, under great Chicago influence Captain Walter Dyett. Garrett began working closely with Muhal Richard Abrams in the late '50s, and continued to into the early '60s as a member of Abrams' Experimental Band. The early '60s also found Garrett playing hard bop with Ira Sullivan and recording with him, Eddie Harris, Dewey Redman (on Look to the Red Star and Rahsaan Roland Kirk (on Kirk's debut album, Introducing Roland Kirk). In the mid-'60s, Garrett relocated to San Francisco and formed a band with multi-reedist Gerald Oshita and drummer Oliver Johnson called the Sound Circus. He remained on the West Coast until the early '70s and -- in addition to working with jazz greats like Archie Shepp, Sonny Rollins, Pharoah Sanders. He and wife and collaborator Zusaan Kali Fasteau formed the Sea Ensemble in 1971 and the following year, embarked on a world that would cover 16 countries over the course of the next several years. During their travels, the Sea Ensemble included Glenn Spearman and Jay Oliver for nearly a year, recorded, and also toured with Archie Shepp. The duo also helped fund their travels through Garrett's skill at bamboo flute making, while Fasteau gave lessons on the shakuhachi. Some of the other artists that Garrett worked with over the years include Johnny Griffin, Sonny Stitt, Joe Henderson, Beaver Harris, Butch Morris, Billy Bang, Frank Wright and Jean-Luc Ponty. Donald Rafael Garrett died on August 17, 1989. |
Memoirs
of a Dream A historic double CD of never-before-released music memorial from Flying Note. Disc One of this archival double CD, entitled Streaming Love, was recorded multi-track (2 layers) in Leiden, Holland in 1975. Disc Two, entitled Come From Deep was recorded live-in-concert in Ankara, Turkey in 1977. This is one of the few and best recorded examples of the artistry and genius of the late composer and multi-instrumentalist Donald Rafael Garrett, particularly in the context of The Sea Ensemble, his duo with his wife, Kali. 92:05 minutes between both discs More from Kali :::>>> Tell A Friend About This CD From Drimala If you like this cd, we think you might also enjoy listening to: Bansuri Dreams (John Wubbenhorst) Bill Cole's Untempered Ensemble Red Star (Noah Howard) Zusaan Kali Fasteau and Donald Rafael Garrett lived a life together that most couples only dream about. Sharing the vagabond existence of itinerant musicians for the better part of fourteen years they traversed the globe touching down in locales as varied as Senegal, Congo, Morocco, Haiti, France, Holland, Turkey, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and Yugoslavia. Along the way they communicated a highly personal style of creative improvised music to countless sets of open ears. This welcome release unearths two recordings waxed during their travels and stands alongside the now deleted Sea Ensemble (ESP) as the only commercially available documents of their fruitful collaborations. Garrett, who passed away in 1989, was widely regarded as a master instrumentalist and instrument craftsman. Best known in jazz circles for his formidable prowess on double bass and clarinet he served as an integral component of several of John Coltrane’s most exploratory albums (Kulu Se Mama, Selflessness and Live In Seattle, all on Impulse) and in the context of the Sea Ensemble with Fasteau his musical parameters opened up to include a multitude of pan-ethnic instruments. Fasteau was similarly versed and as in these recordings their intense and their abiding love for one another comes through abundantly in these recordings. The vintage of the tapes is somewhat problematic to the sound quality of the performances, particularly on the second disc, but the blemishes pale in importance to the beautiful sounds that are unveiled. The first disc presents two studio pieces, both of which make use of overdubbing to allow Fasteau and Garrett to add a second layer of instruments. Garrett’s bass and balafon merge with Fasteau’s harp and piano on “Zenith” in an oscillating dance of binary rhythms. Soon the former’s corpulent strings stretch across a spiraling progression radiated from Fasteau’s ivories. Further along in the temporal continuum Fasteau’s piquant cello streaks playful brush strokes against a clattering, vaguely metallic percussive canvas. “Bamboo Groove” is more grounded than it’s companion. Rooted firmly with Garrett’s rich bass anchor Fasteau’s ghostly shakuhachi sails emotively above before joining with clarinet, and later voices, to create a fathomless aquatic landscape of brightly plumed harmonic cilia. Disc two gathers performances from a public concert the pair gave in Turkey opening with the greeting that could fit well as the overarching mantra for this entire set, “welcome to a feast of sound and movement…one sound and one movement…eat heartily and chew your food.” Audiophile listeners with a low tolerance for surface noise and static may be turned off by the offerings collected here, but those willing to sift through the thin veil of static will find aural treasures beneath. Broken into eleven interlocking fragments the performance covers a wide range of emotions and sonorities. Passages blend from one to the next and several of the pieces seem devoid of an appreciable beginning or end, but this kind of cyclical framework appears integral to the Sea Ensemble’s sound and esthetic. Garrett and Fasteau even touch on the cosmic influence of Sun Ra turning in an ethereal rendition of his “Calling Planet Earth” to the tune of osculating shakuhachis. Compared to the studio offerings on the first disc these in-the-moment creations sound far less rehearsed and there is a visceral facet to their execution that is easily intoxicating. With Garrett’s passing the Sea Ensemble necessarily disolved, but Fasteau has continued her investigations into improvised music releasing a half dozen or so recordings in the last few years. This worthwhile set works as a beautiful point of ingress into her earlier work Garrett as well as a stirring testament to the time they shared to together and will hopefully garner a wide audience. -- Derek Taylor, All About Jazz |
