Air - Air Lore 1979

Recorded for RCA in 1979, the vanguard trio Air set out to explore its jazz roots. In fact, not only the trio's jazz roots, but everybody's right back to Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton as they were inventing music that would tear up the streets of New Orleans and later change the world. Interestingly, since most of the music here -- all written by the aforementioned except for one tune -- was composed by pianists and is widely regarded as piano music, Air's exploration entirely struck the piano from the conversation. Reedman Henry Threadgill, bassist Fred Hopkins, and drummer Steve McCall turned the ragtime music of the fathers inside out and created an exploratory reinsertion of it into the avant-garde of the late '70s. Jelly Roll's "Buddy Bolden's Blues" becomes a blues from another century in the melodic universe of Threadgill, who doesn't give a damn about changes as much as he does stretching the harmonics of the blues idiom into other music entirely. And in the familiar "King Porter Stomp," also by Morton, Threadgill challenges McCall, who quadruples the time so Henry and Fred can stop up the middle eight with some weird angular intervals where arpeggiated harmony and modal striation become one and the same thing. Finally, on Joplin's "Weeping Willow Rag," the band moves through the changes and then undermines them, turning them inside out as if this were really a party tune from somewhere that willow trees didn't exist or had already disappeared into some toxic twilight. Here are the joyous blues, the raucous blues, the rip 'em up and then send 'em home blues trapped in a color palette so rich and so varied it's difficult to find only one or two textures to fit them inside. Through it all, this remains the album most Air fans love most, precisely because of all the joy and irreverence in the proceedings, which didn't update the old music, but brought it into focus for the revolutionary improvisational template that it is. AMG.

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Air - Air Time 1977

First among many ensembles in different genres that have chosen the name Air, this trio specializing in collective improvisation grew directly from the membership of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Throughout 11 albums that appeared over a span of one dozen years this group operated in modes comparable to that of the Art Ensemble of Chicago and at times some of Albert Ayler's early trio realizations. Its inception occurred in 1971, when saxophonist Henry Threadgill agreed to fulfill a request from the theater department at Chicago's Columbia College to devise modern arrangements based upon ragtime compositions of Scott Joplin (a concept borne to fruition by Anthony Braxton and Muhal Richard Abrams in 1976). Threadgill joined forces with bassist Fred Hopkins and drummer Steve McCall, and named the trio Reflection. Although they parted ways the following year, the cooperative unit reassembled in New York in 1975 and chose the elemental name Air. This and their collective penchant for spontaneous creativity resulted in a string of exciting albums with titles like Air Song, Air Raid, Live Air (combining material recorded at Studio Rivbea in New York City's Soho and at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor), Air Time, and Open Air Suite, which has the distinction of being one of the few record albums ever decorated with a painting of a baboon's big blue ass on the cover. Released in 1979, Air Lore returned to the unit's initial itinerary of Scott Joplin, now interspersed with melodies by Jelly Roll Morton. 

Following Air Mail (which includes the sound of Threadgill's own invention, the hubkaphone, an instrument made out of hubcaps) and 80 Degrees Below '82, McCall left the group in 1982 to work with Cecil Taylor and Roscoe Mitchell. His replacement was Pheeroan akLaff, a dynamic individual from Detroit who would ultimately be replaced by Andrew Cyrille within months of the group's dissolution. Rechristened New Air, the trio was recorded live at the 1983 Montreal Jazz Festival but made only one other album, Air Show No. 1, in collaboration with vocalist Cassandra Wilson. By the time this recording was made available in 1987, Air had ceased to exist as Threadgill emerged as a leader of his own larger ensembles, issuing records like X-75, Vol. 1, When Was That?, and Just the Facts and Pass the Bucket and in the 21st centuryrecording and performing with his bands, Carry The Day and Zooid. Steve McCall was felled by a stroke in May of 1989 and Fred Hopkins passed away ten years later. AMG.

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Air - Air 1971

Air was an American jazz rock band. Their self-titled debut album was released in 1971 on Embryo Records (Cat. SD 733). The four core band members were Tom Coppola (Hammond organ), John Siegler (bass), Mark Rosengarden (drums), and Googie Coppola (piano, vocals). The album also featured Randy Brecker on trumpet, Michael Brecker on saxophone, Barry Rogers on trombone, David Earle Johnson on congas and timbales, Robert Kogel on guitar, Bob Rosengarden on vibes, plus Jan Hammer and Herbie Mann on percussion. Herbie Mann was also the producer.

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Air - Air Raid 1976

The critical success of Air's debut album, Air Song, dictated both more of the same and a difference in approach on Air Raid. While there are only four tracks, just as on the first album, here they are broken up between two long pieces -- the title track and "Release," and two mid-length, seven-plus minute works, "Midnight Sun" and "Through a Keyhole Darkly." The concept of group improvisation was the same, but Henry Threadgill's compositional notions began to come through in his solos. He's a born leader and his charge-taking feels natural and wonderfully amorphous, though it reveals itself more often than not. The structure of soloing on "Release" is breathtaking in that it makes a case for the notion of an interval in free improvisation. Threadgill's use of the breath as a rhythmic technique here brings out the most adventurous side of Steve McCall's drumming. Likewise, his engagement with thematic variants creates new and wildly textured terrains for Fred Hopkins to articulate a vision of the bass as an instrument for song as well as rhythm, and one where depth and resonance offer a palette for group searching. Another fine effort. AMG.

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