An undersung figure in the New York City loft jazz scene of the 1970s, Alan Braufman remains an inspiring figure in the jazz landscape. His latest album is Infinite Love Infinite Tears, available now on pink or black vinyl, compact disc, and digital through Valley of Search. It features Braufman on alto saxophone and flute, Patricia Brennan on vibraphone, James Brandon Lewis on tenor saxophone, Ken Filiano on bass, Chad Taylor on drums, and Michael Wimberly on percussion. It’s an energetic and welcoming set, expertly conceived and executed, very much a tonic for troubled times.
Alan Braufman’s discography is a compact one, offering only five releases a leader. His first, Valley of Search, came out in 1975 through the India Navigation label. The album shares its name with the label run by Braufman’s nephew Nabil Ayers, who released it on vinyl and compact disc in 2018 (copies of both formats are still available). Along with Braufman on sax, the band included Cooper-Moore (then named Gene Ashton) on piano, dulcimer, and recitation, Cecil McBee on bass, David Lee on drums, and Ralph Williams on percussion.
Valley of Search followed up that well-received set the next year with Live at WKCR May 22, 1972, an archival dive into duo exchange with Brafman on sax and Cooper-Moore on piano. The limited edition (250 copies) of the one-sided vinyl is unsurprisingly sold out, but the music lives on as a digital release on Bandcamp.
Released in 2022, Live in New York City, February 8, 1975 is still available on 2CD and 3LP (holding five sides of music). Captured in WBAI’s Studio C a few months after the session that produced Valley of Search, the band for February 8, 1975 retains Braufman, Cooper-Moore and Williams and adds William Parker on bass, John Clarke on French horn, and Jim Schapperoew on bass.
These three releases document that Braufman and his collaborators, like numerous other players at the time, were extending Fire Music into the Loft Jazz era. The title of Braufman’s 2020 LP, The Fire Still Burns, makes it clear he was carrying on the tradition but with a newfound attention to composition while organizing a band that could groove.
The Fire Still Burns will not be mistaken with the Braufman archival releases, instead exemplifying the Fire Music-Free Jazz-New Thing ABCs: Always Be Changing. The personnel has adjusted a bit, as Lewis, Filiano, and Wimberly return for Infinite Love Infinite Tears; Taylor replaces Andrew Drury and the palette shifts as Brennan’s vibes take the place of Cooper-Moore’s piano.
Brennan makes an immediate big splash, her instrumental command guiding the Ornette-ish opener “Chasing a Melody” toward the feel of the edgier mid-’60s Blue Note sessions where Bobby Hutcherson joined in on the vibes. But Brennan has a unique approach that includes the subtle use of electronic effects (similar to Mary Halvorson’s use of effects for guitar).
The title track follows, a slower sojourn into hazy Sunday morning tranquility, its aura greatly enhanced by Braufman’s fluting. Reminiscent of a few gentle pathways taken on the Spiritual Jazz journey as the 1970s wound down, it never succumbs to the meanderingly mellow, in part through the sturdy bedrock of Filiano and Taylor.
“Spirits” extends The Fire Still Burns’ attention to groove and delivers an outright stomper as Braufman gets wild on the alto. A familiar jazz motif spanning back to the 1960s was “inside-out”: opening with a bop-like (or Coleman-esque) head, getting abstract and fiery, and then returning to the theme. But Braufman and crew take a different approach, interweaving inside and out through the piece’s duration, and it’s quite effective.
For “Edge of Time” the band cultivates some accessible searching (the solos dabble with the ecstatic) bringing to mind the Black Jazz label’s stronger ’70s output, but again distinct, in large part due to how Taylor, Filiano, and Brennan mingle. The joyous “Brooklyn” could’ve been retitled “A Melody Caught” and released as a vinyl single, and “Liberation” is a sweet reengagement with the swirling abstract intensity of the loft era as the band strives for the beautiful.
With nearly a quarter of the 21st Century in the books, Alan Braufman stands a vital bearer of the Fire Music torch, this stature further cemented by the wonderfully varied Infinite Love Infinite Tears.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
