McCoy Tyner - Extensions (Blue Note Tone Poet Vinyl LP)

McCoy Tyner - Extensions | Vinyl LP - Blue Note Tone Poet Series Reissue (BN-LA006-F, all-analogue, mastered by Kevin Gray)

McCoy Tyner left John Coltrane's quartet in 1965. Alice Coltrane joined it a year later, playing piano in the seat he'd vacated until Coltrane's death in July 1967. By February 1970, when Tyner recorded Extensions at Van Gelder Studio, he'd made four Blue Note albums of increasing ambition: The Real McCoy, Tender Moments, Time for Tyner and Expansions, each one wider in scope than the last. For this session he assembled a sextet that would have been impossible to convene a few years earlier. Elvin Jones, his old rhythmic partner from the Coltrane quartet, plays drums. Alice Coltrane plays harp on three of the four tracks, her sweeping glissandos opening "Message From The Nile" and carrying the album's spiritual undertow from there. Wayne Shorter, still a member of Miles Davis's band at the time, plays tenor and soprano saxophone, and Gary Bartz plays alto. Ron Carter, like Shorter a member of the Miles Davis quintet through most of the 1960s, holds down the bass.

All four compositions are Tyner's. "Message From The Nile" and "Survival Blues" stretch past twelve minutes each, long enough for the ensemble to develop ideas at a pace that recalls the Coltrane quartet's extended performances without imitating them. "His Blessings" closes the album as something more personal: Tyner described it in the original liner notes as reflecting his life and the time he spent with John Coltrane. Duke Pearson produced the session and Rudy Van Gelder engineered it, but Blue Note didn't release the album until 1973, three years after it was recorded and a year after Tyner had already left the label for Milestone.

This Tone Poet reissue was mastered by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio, supervised by Joe Harley, and pressed at RTI on 180g vinyl. The jacket is a standard single sleeve replicating the original release, including the period price code on the front cover.