McCoy Tyner Quartet

Though he was John Coltrane’s foil in the Coltrane Quartet in the early ‘60s, recording such classics as A Love Supreme, Tyner hardly stopped there. He recorded a number of influential post-bop albums in the early ‘70s and remains vital, even as he turns 70 this December. Last year, he self-released McCoy Tyner Quartet, returning to the Coltrane format and demonstrating all the emphatic harmonic color, powerful dynamism and expressive minimalism you expect from one of the century’s greatest pianists. Indeed, the sound of his heavy left hand pounding hard on the backbeat while his right races around arpeggios in fevered flourishes, has been imprinted on jazz’s soul as surely as Bo Diddley’s beat on rock. Ever adventurous, last week he released Guitars, featuring Tyner in a quartet with a range of guitarists including Bela Fleck, Mark Ribot, Bill Frisell and John Scofield, on an album he calls unlike anything he’s ever done.
Fri., Oct. 3, 8 p.m., 2008