Reaching For The Stars: Trios / Duos / Solos

Album review

To say that Philadelphia-based pianist-composer Hasaan Ibn Ali (1931-1980) is a fringe figure in jazz history is an understatement. During his lifetime his only recorded appearance was on 1965's The Max Roach Trio Featuring the Legendary Hasaan; an album featuring his compositions, it was originally to be issued under his name. A second trio album with saxophonist Odean Pope and drummer Kalil Madi was recorded by Atlantic but went unreleased and was lost in a fire. Finally, in 2021, that changed. Omnivore issued Metaphysics: The Lost Atlantic Album, the second trio set restored from a taped copy languishing in a vault for decades. Months later, the producers expanded Ali's piano print by releasing the double-length Retrospect in Retirement of Delay: The Solo Recordings offering informal recordings from 1962 to 1965 made by college friends Alan Sukoenig (co-producer with Cheryl Pawelski) and saxophonist Dave Shrier on a portable Norelco tape recorder. Apparently, they weren't done. They unearthed 11 more tracks from the personal vaults of Sukoenig and Schrier, and released Reaching for the Stars: Trios/Duos/Solos. They solicited liner notes from pianist Ethan Iverson.
The first half contains six tunes from a 1962 live recording in trio with bassist Henry Grimes and drummer Kalil Madi -- four of these later appeared on The Max Roach Trio Featuring the Legendary Hasaan. While the sound is somewhat dodgy, you can hear almost everything. Opener "Almost Like Me" is driven by Grimes' slightly angular, two-bar bassline as Ali runs the percussive scalar progression relentlessly before undertaking a solo. The ballad "Din-ka Street" is played at the same tempo as on the Roach/Ali/Art Davis set, but Grimes' woody, hard-swinging bassline frames Ali's comps, accents, and solos. Unfortunately, you can't hear Madi until the middle eight. "Pay Not Play Not" is slower than on the 1965 album. The dialogue between Grimes and Ali in the middle is canny, playful, and swinging. "Ad Aspera Ad Astra" was recorded for Ali's second Atlantic album, but it was lost. This trio's run jams together a march, a blues, and a gospel shout. Madi's unwavering tempo leaves room for dazzling flourishes by the pianist. Vocalist Muriel Winston, accompanied by Ali, appears on three standards. The ten-minute "Stella by Starlight" is aggressive, unrestrained, and percussive as Ali explores and fragments harmonies, tonal nuances, and driving dynamics. Perhaps the real set highlights are the long solo pieces. "After You've Gone" is dynamically dazzling and harmonically advanced as it juxtaposes dissonant bebop, hard bop, and even modal with cutting single lines and bass runs and accents. The closer, recorded in a women's dorm in 1962, makes use of ragtime, blues, bop, Ellington, and Ravel in a jaunty, slippery 4/4. While Reaching for the Stars... is not quite as consistent as its predecessors, it is an invaluable document for its solo pieces and early trio performances.

© Thom Jurek /TiVo