Albert Ayler

 

My observance of Independence Day has moved away from patriotic celebration to meditations on the spirit of freedom and some of the persons who I feel embody it.

Free jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler (1936-1970) was so unbought and unfettered in his unorthodox approach to playing his instrument that he never found an audience during his short career beyond ardent fans like jazz pioneers and innovators John Coltrane and Don Cherry. I find his work endlessly fascinating and transporting despite its challenging structures.

Ayler was born in Cleveland but had his greatest success (relatively speaking) in Europe, making his first recordings in Sweden in 1962. The following year, he relocated to New York and was soon signed by the experimental label ESP-Disk, which released his classic record Spiritual Unity, which might be the best loved of Ayler's albums (again, relatively speaking).

Ayler's music is difficult -- atonal and arrhythmic. His most familiar compositons begin with him playing alto or tenor saxophone phrases from hymns or other spiritual songs, military marches or children's ditties and then spinning wildly into cacophanous improvisations, on early recordings accompanied by bass and drums, but later with piano, other saxes, trumpet, spoken word and singing.

Though there have been about 30 releases of Ayler's recorded music (studio work, concerts, compilations), not one of them has sold well. He remains an acquired taste, an elusive, uncompromising artist with stark vision of what music should be, how instruments should sound.

Because of this commitment to a singular vision, Ayler lived a penniless existence until his tragic death in 1970. He disappeared from his home in early November and his body was pulled from the East River more than two weeks later, a presumed suicide.

Toward the end of his life, Ayler showed signs of emotional disturbance and dissociation even as his music was growing more accessible, leaning toward the more R&B and rock 'n' roll stylings of his youth without completely abandoning his free form vitality. His last live sessions were in France four months before his death, recordings from these performances were finally released last month, nearly 50 years later.