Allen Lowe - I Should Have Stayed Dead: The Death And Life Of Allen Lowe / 3CD set

I Should Have Stayed Dead: The Death and Life of Allen Lowe is the three-disc soundtrack to a documentary film about the life, career, skills, death and rebirth of saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, and writer. Lowe, a cancer survivor, endured 25 operations post-remission. The film, produced by Jonathan Scheuer, discusses Lowe's compositional and playing approaches, and offers performance clips, Lowe's surgeries and recovery, and offers interviews with his surgeon and music historian Greil Marcus. This three-disc, 55-track package contains recordings between 2025 and 2026, and music between the 1990s and early 2000s. Lowe's ensemble includes bassist Colson Jimenez and drummer Ethan Kogan; his range of occasional collaborators includes pianists Esteban Castro and Matthew Shipp, clarinetist Ben Goldberg, trumpeter Daniel Bereket, guitarist Ava Mendoza, saxophonist Loren Schoenberg, and others. The discs offer recordings with Roswell Rudd, Doc Cheatham, Julius Hemphill, David Murray, and Hamiet Bluiett, among others.

Opener "Staying Dead" is introduced by Jimenez playing an arco drone under Kogan's syncopated drums and Lowe's solo. Bereket appears on "Barry Harris Had a Hit Record and Didn't Like It," a tune that weaves hard-and-post bop while referencing Lee Morgan's "Sidewinder." "Theme for Wadada" written for the trumpeter, features him up front with Lowe with resonant groove and swing. Shipp's pointillistic style adorns "The Harder Blues" -- a sequel to Julius Hemphill's classic "Hard Blues." It also includes a wonderful duet with Shipp on "Rainy Days of Life (For Jaki Byard)."

Disc two's "The Second Assassin" was recorded in 1991 at the Knitting Factory. Written in Hemphill's style, he actually appears in the septet. The interplay between saxophonists and trumpets is glorious. "The Gates of Hell Are Always Open" is a fingerpopping, improvisational interrogation of gospel music. The blues current flows through "I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Scream" and "Blue and Bluer" taken from a 1991 Knitting Factory gig, includes legendary trumpeter Doc Cheatham in an abstract yet swinging midtempo ballad.

The final disc opens with "Fanfare for Albert," a wonderful quartet tribute (with Bereket's trumpet) to Albert Ayler. "West Virginia's Blues," from 2004 is a punk-blues with Lowe on electric guitar, bass, and drums. "Maya Deren Dances the Voodoo Around" offers a stellar take on abstracted New Orleans' jazz by Lowe and Bereket. Smith reappears on the glorious "Lafcadio by the Sea," a deep transformative ballad.

"Rhumba Lumumba," with Shipp, offers a memorial for the late Congo President by way of swinging, hard-grooving, modal jazz dance music. "Yancey’s Blues" features Blueitt in his last recording session. It's a humid, steamy blues with killer back and forth interplay between the saxophonists and wonky guitar from Ava Mendoza. I Should Have Stayed Dead: The Death and Life of Allen Lowe may be a soundtrack, but it also stands on its own as evidence of the visionary Lowe employing his abilities to pay tribute to the historical jazz tradition as it informs innovation and extension into the present. It is masterful, joyous, sprawling, and essential listening. Thom Jurek ~ AllMusicGuide