Vibrations in the Village: Live at the Village Gate; Seek & Listen: Live at the Penthouse by Rahsaan Roland Kirk
Rahsaan Roland Kirk once lived in Milwaukee, as did his accompanist on Vibrations in the Village, pianist Melvin Rhyne. The jacket notes for both new Kirk albums were written by a musician who once lived in Milwaukee, John Kruth. Alas, a recording by Kirk in Milwaukee has yet to surface, but this pair of previously lost concerts helps fill another gap in his discography.
Kirk was a one-man sax section, willing and able to play multiple instruments simultaneously. As Kruth notes, his flute playing found an unexpected echo in London’s post-psychedelic rock scene with Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson. It’s harder to measure Kirk’s influence on jazz except to say that he opened doors to the imagination.
The single disc Vibrations in the Village was caught at New York’s famed Village Gate in 1963. The two-disc Seek & Listen documents a pair of 1967 shows in Seattle. Kirk’s large, ebullient personality shines on all three dates along with his prolific powers of breath control and sustain. He wrote much of his material but loved to perform the songs of his predecessors as well as his cohort. These live albums include Kirk’s renditions of Charles Mingus, Johnny Mercer, Rodgers and Hart, Jerome Kern, Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, Burt Bacharach … you get the picture.
Unlike contemporaries Ornette Coleman or Albert Ayler, Kirk wasn’t concerned with breaking boundaries but was happy to bend them. The tempos of swing and hard bop and the structures of romantic ballads remained in place as Kirk colored wonderfully inside and around the lines. As Kruth wrote, “You could always depend on Rahsaan to bring it!’”
