Magnet (p.118) - "Shipp, Parker and Ware improvise like they're tapped into a common brain. They anticipate each other's moves and spur each other on..."
The Wire (p.67) - "[T]his mammoth, awe-inspiring document is so essential, and fortuitous....Ware slowly spins in the spotlight, revealing every aspect of his magisterial vision."
JazzTimes (pp.78-9) - "Ware is uniformly intense..."
Recording information: Terni, Italy; Milano, Italy; Chiasso, Switzerland (1998 - 2003).
A longtime frontrunner in the jazz avant-garde, saxophonist David S. Ware has released one of his strongest and most comprehensive statements with 2005's LIVE IN THE WORLD. A sprawling three-CD set, this collection of performances recorded in Italy in Switzerland features Ware playing with regular sidemen Matthew Shipp (piano) and William Parker (bass), two of the finest musicians in the game. Different drummers dominate each set--Susie Ibarra on Disc One, Hamid Drake on Disc Two, and Guillermo E. Brown on Disc Three--in each case providing pulse, texture, clatter, and drive to the tireless exploration and scintillating chemistry of the core trio.
The material includes covers (an extended, abstract reading of "The Way We Were") and originals that range in feel from the quietly meditative ("Aquarian Sound") to the kinetic ("Logistic") to the rhythmic and ruminative ("Elder's Path"). Disc Three is primarily devoted to a complete re-working of Sonny Rollins's "Freedom Suite;" Ware's version expands and explores the original to spectacular effect. At the center of all this, of course, is Ware's tenor work--passionate, nuanced, relentlessly inventive, and technically formidable. LIVE IN THE WORLD is not only one of Ware's finest recordings, it is an example of free jazz at its absolute best.
