Enlightenment album cover
Enlightenment

McCoy Tyner

1973
Milestone

In July 1973, pianist McCoy Tyner brought his road band — saxophonist Azar Lawrence, bassist Juini Booth, and drummer Alphonse Mouzon — to the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, where they recorded this double LP of new material. The concert opens with the three-part “Enlightenment Suite,” two 10-minute spiritual jazz workouts with a four-minute solo piano passage between them. Lawrence is playing his saxophone through some kind of effects pedal that makes it sound like an angry bumblebee. The suite is followed by two more 10-minute pieces, “Presence” and “Nebula,” on which Tyner plays with a degree of free jazz intensity that may surprise listeners accustomed to his usual flourishes. At the beginning of “Presence,” he’s in Cecil Taylor territory. The show and the album end with the 24-minute, side-long epic “Walk Spirit, Talk Spirit,” simply one of the greatest things Tyner ever laid to tape. It’s a gospel-jazz-funk piece that begins with a deep bass solo, but when the full band comes in, Mouzon is hitting hard, and Lawrence is absolutely wailing. By the time it ends, the audience is in ecstasy.

Phil Freeman

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