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Howard Reich über Richie Cole (für den Chicago Tribune, 18. Mai):
If I had to crystallize alto saxophonist Richie Cole’s art in a single word, it would be “exuberance.” Or maybe “ebullience.” Or perhaps “exhilaration.”
For when Cole hit the stage, you knew you were about to be nearly overwhelmed by a tidal wave of rhythmic energy, emotional heat, technical brilliance and, oh yes, improvisational ingenuity. Other altoists may have been more subtly nuanced, discreetly understated, coolly reserved or high-toned in their delivery. But Cole put it all out there, everything he had, full blast, straight, no pretense. And audiences loved him for it.
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“What happened was that I was working 40 weeks out of the year, which helped to contribute to my problems, because there’s a positive and a negative thing about traveling.
“You play the gig, and everybody loves you for two hours, then all of a sudden you have 22 hours of sitting around by yourself, staring at hotel room walls and hanging out in airports. It takes its toll.
“Also, every time you walk onstage, you’re supposed to be a genius. And sometimes all you want to do is sit home and watch ‘Geraldo.’ The last thing you want to do that night is play the saxophone.”
Having just about burned out, Cole had decided to “cool out here, in the Midwest, and get away from a lot of bad influences,” he told me.
And the plan worked.
His 1993 “comeback” album, “Profile” (Heads Up), showed him in superior form, “his improvisations more clever, his tone more ebullient, his lines more searing than ever,” as I wrote in my review. His follow-up, “Kush: The Music of Dizzy Gillespie” (Heads Up), attested to his reverence for bebop and his decidedly personal spin on it.
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #151: Neuheiten aus dem Archiv – 09.04., 22:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba