Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Steve Coleman & 5 Elements at Fulton Street Collective



On Monday night I got down to Fulton Street Collective for Steve Coleman and 5 Elements [Coleman (as) Jonathan Findlayson (trpt) Kokayi (v) Anthony Tidd (b) Sean Rickman (d)]. It's somewhere I've been meaning to check out for a while now and it's a nice space. It was good to be close to the action and acoustically the room was ok - the horns sounded great but the electric bass lacked a bit of clarity... but my ears adjusted to it. This was the second time I had heard this lineup (last time was at Constellation) and like then, it was an enjoyable evening. Actually, I may have enjoyed last night a bit more. They played one long set - almost 2 hours in length mostly consisting of pieces strung together without rest. At times the music drifted a little (or maybe it was my mind drifting) but I didn't really mind, possibly due to the trance/ritualistic/cyclic vibe they generated. Kokayi is a great fit for the group and it seems Coleman's tone gets richer each time I've heard him (four times now). He's been in town for most of April, and had I been more organized I could have got along to a lot more than this one night. Hopefully Coleman fans made the most of it.

No comments: