Archie Shepp Quartet

A very welcome return to Ronnie Scott's for a true tenor saxophone legend, Archie Shepp, best known for his passionately afro-centric music of the late 1960’s and who counted jazz giants Cecil Taylor and John Coltrane as his contemporaries.

He has been at various times a feared firebrand and radical, soulful throwback and contemplative veteran. Shepp was viewed in the '60s as perhaps the most articulate and disturbing member of the free generation, a published playwright willing to speak on the record in unsparing, explicit fashion about social injustice and the anger and rage he felt.

His tenor sax solos were searing, harsh, and unrelenting, played with a vivid intensity. But in the '70s, Shepp employed a fatback/swing-based R&B approach, and in the '80s he mixed straight bebop, ballads, and blues pieces displaying little of the fury and fire from his earlier days. Expect a master class in soulful tenor saxophone from a true master deeply rooted in every aspect of the jazz tradition.