Albert Ayler Quartet: Copenhagen Live 1964

The program presented here is indicative of a customary set by the band, which is to say unlike any other music of the time. Ayler continues a practice of elemental one-word composition titles with pieces like the tender "Mothers," itself a recasting of the old spiritual "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child". There, Ayler pulls out his vibrato stops from the start, drenching the audience in a warm current of matriarchally-minded pathos. Cherry acts as a strong cantilevering presence, anchoring Ayler's energy and interpolating his own freedom. It's as if the two have slipped the pinions of temporal order and entered their own private plane.