Blue Note | Ravi Coltrane (ts), Ralph Alessi (t), Luis Perdomo, Geri Allen (p), Drew Gress, James Genus (b), EJ Strickland, and Eric Harland (d). Rec. 2010-2011

Spirit Fiction is saxophonist Ravi Coltrane’s Blue Note debut, the label’s cachet such that it immediately attracts the attention of the jazz world. Although in the years following his album debut in 1998 with Moving Pictures, Coltrane has established a secure reputation among jazz fans, his name recognition in the jazz world will now, in comparison, take off. Deservedly too, since he has conscientiously worked at forging his own voice, rather than trading off the family name and affecting the more overt characteristics of his father’s style that so many saxophonists have chosen to do.

Two ensembles are at work here, his regular quartet with up-and-coming Luis Perdomo on piano, and the group that accompanied him on his second album From the Round Box, recorded in 2000, with Geri Allen on piano. By way of contrast is a duet with EJ Strickland (‘Spring & Hudson’) and a trio with saxophonist/co-producer Joe Lovano and Geri Allen (‘Fantasm’). In between is some occasionally inspired playing culminating in ‘Marilyn & Tammy’, an album highlight.

Stuart Nicholson