It was around midnight and the music was still intense, the sax notes rising like steam and heading off in unexpected directions. And the audience? Fast asleep.
Not really. Only a few in the Paris club crowd had succumbed – maybe spouses dragged to the show by hard-core jazz fans.
The rest listened intently, caught up in the group’s unusual groove, solos that often seem not to be solos at all.
There is a fine line between deep listening and sleeping, bassist Larry Grenadier said later. I prefer to view it as the former.
Fly, an American jazz trio that recently released their second album, Sky & Country, has turned heads with their unique approach to the music.
Their brand of jazz, with songs that take shape slowly and can be difficult to follow, is not for the impatient.
But rewards await those who give it the time, including the sounds of saxophonist Mark Turner, who has become one of the most respected players on the jazz scene, compared by some critics to the legendary John Coltrane.
If jazz, as the cliché goes, is democracy at work thanks to improvisation among players, Fly is out to prove this is right.
They are the first to tell you that they are a trio in name only. Their goal – one at least – is to collaborate, with all and none as leader.
The idea that we’re saying is that it’s a real collective, everybody is contributing to make this work, said Grenadier, 43.
But that’s only part of the story.
‘It just seems to happen’
Turner has been hailed for his style on the saxophone, particularly among younger musicians in search of fresh sounds. But the 42-year-old remains an unassuming man, a practitioner of Buddhism whose calm pervades his playing.
Along with Coltrane, he has also been compared to the late Warne Marsh, a lesser known player associated with the cool jazz movement and known for his intellectual approach.
No wonder a recent incident left fans worried: Turner cut his fingers while sawing wood and needed surgery and time off to get them back into shape.
They work enough to play, he said when asked after one of Fly s Paris shows if his fingers had healed.
Describing the songs on their new album, he spoke of stretching the music and letting it unfold slowly.
There are points where you’ll hear part of the melody and not hear it again, he said Points where you’ll hear it recapitulate a little bit, but not the whole thing.
Drummer Jeff Ballard, 45, calls it episodes in the composition, chapters.
The band came together after the three, who all grew up in California, met up on the east coast of the United States.
All had performed with an impressive list of musicians and Turner had recorded as a band leader on the Warner Brothers record label before being dropped, his cerebral style seen as not selling well enough.
But others noticed, and the New York Times later published a story on Turner with the headline, The Best Jazz Player You’ve Never Heard.
He’s becoming one of the most influential sax players – maybe the most influential sax players among musicians, said French jazz critic Thierry Quenum, who has long followed Turner and Fly.
I interviewed Mark at the time (before the label dropped him), and I asked him, ‘If you ever were dumped by Warner, what would you do? He said, ‘I’d do the same. I don’t care about the label.’ And that’s exactly what happened.
He didn’t care as long as he could search for his personal way to play the saxophone, said Quenum.
While all three men were searching for a collaborative approach to jazz, once they met their most important consideration was to play together.
Fly s eponymous first album came out in 2004 and though knocked down by some traditionalists, the trio has continued to draw attention.
Their style is totally fresh to me and it s needed in this music today, said by email Jason Palmer, a rising 30-year-old Boston-based trumpet player whose own first album, Songbook, came out last year.
They have that perfect mix of intellectual hipness and a collective groove that many groups in jazz today struggle to find the balance with.
Despite the attention, Fly’s members say they simply want to play what they enjoy and let the rest take its own course.
One thing I like is that that’s not the goal, said Ballard. It’s nowhere near our thoughts -trying to do something new or different. It just seems to happen.
