# Teodross Avery Potent: After The Rain: A Night for Coltrane: Photos, Live full concert video

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2019/03/29/teodross-avery-potent-after-the-rain-a-night-for-coltrane-photos-live-full-concert-video/
- Published: 2019-03-29T20:48:09+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**John Coltrane looms as a towering influence for any tenor saxophonist in the jazz
tradition.**

Teodross Avery has known this to be true from the beginning of his musical journey,
more than 30 years ago — though he recently discovered how powerful it can be to
bring Coltrane’s music back down to human scale. This is the core strategy on Avery’s
cathartic new tribute, _After the Rain: A Night For Coltrane, _which will be released
on the Tompkins Square label on May 10.

Recorded live in Avery’s hometown, Oakland, Calif., almost exactly a year ago, the
album conveys a feeling of urgent communion and soulful expedition. “I wanted to
make sure that I balanced between songs that were important both to John Coltrane’s
music aesthetic and also to real connoisseurs of his music,” Avery writes in an 
album note. “I researched interviews, books, I spoke to music scholars, and I spoke
to musicians who knew him personally.”

The album’s six tracks span the first two or three phases of Coltrane’s career as
a leader, reaching as far back as his 1957 debut on Prestige. There’s also an ecstatic“
Afro Blue,” in the manner of _Live at Birdland_; and a climactic version of “Pursuance”
from _A Love Supreme. _

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The opening track — which like the title track comes from _Africa/Brass_, Coltrane’s
1961 Impulse! debut — is “Blues Minor.” It appears here in an exclusive premiere.

Avery is an alumnus of the Berklee College of Music and a former member of the Young
Lion cohort, signed to GRP/Impulse! at age 19. He has always been a charismatic 
player with an earthy, booming sound; he has also been a sought-after collaborator,
for everyone from Betty Carter to Lauryn Hill.

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CREDIT MYRON CHRISTIAN

His relatively low profile as a recording artist in recent years is partly a byproduct
of his focus: a few years ago he received a PhD in Jazz Studies from the University
of Southern California, and he now teaches at California State University Dominguez
Hills, in Los Angeles. His previous release was a duo collaboration with drummer
Marvin “Bugalu” Smith called _Post Modern Trap Music_ (Katalyst Entertainment), 
released in 2017.

For _After the Rain, _Avery regrouped with pianist Adam Schulman, bassist Jeff Chambers
and drummer Darrell Green. All are based in the Bay Area, with varying degrees of
history together. (Chambers, for one, played the album-release show for Avery’s 
1996 album _My Generation_.)

In his liner notes for the album, Ben Ratliff observes the way that Avery’s band
captures something intense yet almost relaxed in this music — a function of experience,
and shifting expectation. “Coltrane remains a model for doing as much as possible
in anyone’s fast-track years: playing, learning, processing information,” he writes.“
Later in one’s life, possibly, he becomes a model for a bigger and deeper way of
doing things.”

![](https://i0.wp.com/www.wbgo.org/sites/wbgo/files/styles/medium/public/201903/
img_9773_jpg.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

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