Review: Jazz greats celebrate Miles Davis, John Coltrane in concert
Terence Blanchard wanted to get one thing straight with the audience:
The trumpeter and his five fellow musicians were in the house to pay tribute to Miles Davis and John Coltrane, on the centennial celebration of the birth of these jazz giants in 1926. And that meant Blanchard and company were going to play music associated with those icons, but they were in no way interested in performing it exactly like Miles and Trane did or even trying to sound like them.
“All of these arrangements are ours. You know what I’m saying?” Blanchard said to the full house of jazz lovers assembled at the SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco on Thursday (May 28). “Y’all see where we’re going with this, right? OK. I just want to make sure, you know, because the jazz police is out there — alive and well — you know what I mean?”
Well, there was absolutely no need to call in the jazz police because this band — which also featured Ravi (son of John and Alice) Coltrane on saxophone, Charles Altura on guitar, Julian Pollack on piano and keyboard, David Ginyard, Jr. on bass and Oscar Seaton on drums — definitely had its own thing going on during the opener of this four-night centennial celebration that runs through Sunday.
There were times when a melody would rise up from the musical mix and it might spark a memory of one of those landmark recordings from the ’50s, produced while Trane was a member of Davis’ First Great Quintet or, later, when he returned to the fold as part of a sextet.
Mainly, however, the listeners just dug the music for it’s own in-the-moment thing, especially given that the instrumentation — with the use of guitar, electric bass and keyboards — being so different than anything ever found while Coltrane and Davis recorded together.
As if to further put their own signature on the evening, Blanchard immediately turned to the title track to his Grammy-nominated “Flow” — a tune, broken up into three distinct parts on the album, which he penned with bassist Derrick Hodge — and that proved to be a sterling way to start the 90-minute-plus show.
At that point, the trumpeter was just working in a quintet setting — minus Ravi Coltrane. Yet, the brilliant saxophonist made his appearance — and made his appearance most definitely felt — with the second number, “Flamenco Sketches.”
Coltrane got the spotlight first on that tune, which closes out Side 2 of Davis’ phenomenally popular “Kind of Blue” album from 1959, slowly burning his way through a mesmerizing tenor solo that had Blanchard simply shaking his head in admiration.
The sax faded into a slowly moving guitar piece from Altura, whose leads seemed to often fill in — if not technically, at least symbolically — for the alto sax work delivered by Julian “Cannonball” Adderley once the Great Quintet expanded to a sextet (ironically, with the return of Trane to the fold) in 1958. Then the bandleader — who also happens to be the executive artistic director of SFJAZZ — brought the tune to a climax with a bright, escalating trumpet lead, climbing steadily up a mountain of hard-earned notes before gently coasting back down to a finish.
Blanchard and Coltrane joined forces for the first time of the evening with “On Green Dolphin Street,” with their two-horn attack nicely opening up this theme originally composed for the 1947 Lana Turner film “Green Dolphin Street” that, one year later, Davis and Trane would record and fully cement as a jazz standard.
The six artists later rolled into a lengthy segment that drew from parts of several different Davis classics, including an absolutely transcendent spotlight on the Disney favorite “Someday My Prince Will Come,” a song composed for the 1937 animated movie “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” that Davis would borrow as the title track to his 1961 album. The assortment of melodies — which also included “Teo” (another “Someday My Prince Will Come” track) and “All Blues” (from “Kind of Blue”) — blended wonderfully together, highlighted by some energetic back-and-forth between Pollack and Seaton.
“That was what the young people call a mash up,” Blanchard explained of the piece.
Blanchard would close up the main set with one of his old favorites from Davis’ catalog.
“I used to love this man, when I first heard it,” Blanchard remarked. “Now I get a chance to do my interpretation of it.”
He was talking about “Two Bass Hit,” a sparkling bebop standard penned by trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and pianist John Lewis that Davis, Coltrane and company recorded on 1958’s “Milestones.” The version heard on Thursday night wasn’t so much Gillespie bebop, or “Milestones” Miles, but rather a very pure and insightful showcase of what the six players on the stage had to offer — which, to put it mildly, was plenty.
The group returned for one encore, which Blanchard used as an opportunity to come around full circle and return to his own masterpiece album, “Flow,” for the soon-to-be-standard “Benny’s Tune” (written by guitarist Lionel Loueke).
It was a nice way to sign off on the evening, with Blanchard’s own distinct signature, and illustrate that these players — while grouped together for these run of concerts to pay tribute to two historical greats — are at least as much interested in the present and future of jazz as they are in its past.
Terence Blanchard & Ravi Coltrane, Miles Davis & John Coltrane Centennial: 7:30 p.m. through Saturday, May 30; 7 p.m. May 31 at the SFJAZZ Center's Miner Auditorium in San Francisco; $44.50-$124.50; www.sfjazz.org.
Copyright 2026 Tribune Content Agency. All Rights Reserved.