Azar Lawrence & the Love Supreme 50th Anniv. Band at Da Camera Jazz Series at Wortham Theater Center

A powerful tenor saxophonist in the midst of a welcome career resurgence, Azar Lawrence commemorates the 50th anniversary of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme with a quartet featuring Benito Gonzalez, piano; Essiet Okon Essiet, bass and Jeff “Tain” Watts on drums. Lawrence is one of the principal voices of the post-Coltrane age, having played with Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard and many more.

“He seems in possession of a great, almost ecstatic power, but he cares about songs, and their shape and melody always pulled him back to earth. He controlled several mixtures of things that could seem like opposites: easy, melodic swing and bottom-line seriousness; short-line form and long-line expressiveness...

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A powerful tenor saxophonist in the midst of a welcome career resurgence, Azar Lawrence commemorates the 50th anniversary of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme with a quartet featuring Benito Gonzalez, piano; Essiet Okon Essiet, bass and Jeff “Tain” Watts on drums. Lawrence is one of the principal voices of the post-Coltrane age, having played with Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard and many more.

“He seems in possession of a great, almost ecstatic power, but he cares about songs, and their shape and melody always pulled him back to earth. He controlled several mixtures of things that could seem like opposites: easy, melodic swing and bottom-line seriousness; short-line form and long-line expressiveness. All this resulted in a controlled energy that grew bigger than the group itself. It works well in a club, but this is a band you could imagine on bigger stages.” – The New York Times

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