The highly re -reused musician has played with many bigger jazz names, such as Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner and Miles Davis, such as the soloist records recorded for the mythical prestige footprint.
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Azar Lawrence is not a household name, but he has a total CV to rely on. As this musical interview and exclusive live photographs from the Grammy Museum shows, the highly regarded Jazz Saxophonist played with many of the biggest names in his genre, including Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner and Miles Davis, as well as to forge a remarkable career. in the mid-1970s.
Having grown up in Los Angeles in the early 1960s, Lawrence grew in a district where great Jazz names such as Earl Palmer and Louis Jordan were nearby neighbors. He discovered the wonders of jazz after being friendly with Reggie Gating, son of another mythical jazz. Saxophonist Benny Glasson.
“Reggie lived at the end of the Hollywood hills, beyond Davy Jones de Monkees, and had this collection of records,” he excites Lawrence, speaking of his first influences in Udiscover’s musical interview that can look completely next. Training
“That’s how I discovered Miles Davis, Hank Mobley, John Coltrane and many others. Listening to [Coltrane’s] A Love Supreme was just a reevaluation experience. Just in the way the horn sounded.
A graduate of Horace Tapscott’s Pan African People’s Arkestra, with whom he played as a teenager, Lawrence later recorded three albums in as many years for Bob Weinstock’s jazz imprint Prestige. It was while on tour in Europe with pianist McCoy Tyner, in 1974, that he was offered a chance to record as a leader by producer Orrin Keepnews. The owner of the Milestone label, Keepnews was in Montreux, Switzerland, to capture Tyner’s quartet at the lakeside town’s famous jazz festival.
“I made the album there with McCoy and that’s when Orrin KeepNeWs heard me for the first time,” he told Udesscubover Music in the past. “Inside the album cover, there is a photo of McCoy on the lake and it was taken on a yacht cruise organized through the record company. I was invited to go there and, this trip, Orrin Keepnews asked me if I would be interested in signing prestige.
Azar Lawrence’s first solo album, Bridge to the New Age, went unnoticed at the time but has since been hailed as an early example of post-John Coltrane spiritual jazz and has been cited as a precursor to the new jazz sensation. Jazz Kamasi Washington. existing attempt.
Bridge the New Age was reissued in vinyl through Craft Recordings in 2017 and the seal also recently gave the Fundamental Lawrence album of 1975, Summer Solstice, the 180 g vinyl treatment, with its new completely mastered edition in a form Analog from the original tapes. This religious album of loose jazz remains one of the most prominent aspects of Azar Lawrence career and is one of the few artists of the mythical era of prestige recordings that continues to travel and throw new music.
“My roots as far as the stuff I wrote in the 1970s, such as Bridge Into The New Age and Summer Solstice – all the rhythms basically came from Africa”, he reveals in this interview. “So what we consider funk and all of that mixed together is the Azar Lawrence Experience!”
Listen to Azar Lawrence’s on Apple Music and Spotify.