Live Review: McCoy Tyner

McCoy Tyner, Piano
Charlie Parker Jazz Festival – August 28, 2010
Marcus Garvey Park, Harlem

It was an emotional experience seeing the last living member of John Coltrane Quartet perform (after nearly 40 years; my bad). Tyner’s bearing in pictures from the days of the classic Coltrane quartet projected Eastern asceticism and deliberate humility (contrasting a certain wild energy of Elvin Jones, both musically and personally). Yesterday he seemed more outgoing and personable than I remembered. He brought his family and introduced them with a very American down-home friendliness to the crowd in front of him.

Those who expect to hear the complex but swinging right hand acrobatics Tyner used until the 1970s would have been disappointed. At yesterday’s concert, his playing was reminiscent of Abdullah Ibrahim or Keith Jarrett, sustaining incantatory ostinatos for whole numbers, and across numbers. In terms of the piano, it was all about how both hands work together, not melody (right hand) and accompaniment (left hand).

His first piece was the most intriguing. He set up a counterpoint between two very regular melodies, with chords changing with each melody note. It was classic (or classical) in its strict development and balance, but African in its polytexturality and churning depth below the surface.

Other songs included the standard I Should Care, Coltrane’s Mr. PC, and his own Blues on the Corner. On the latter two, he punctuated the ostinatos with some short, stabbing clusters. But otherwise his measured pace seemed appropriate to an elder statesman, rather than a young firebrand.