San Francisco Jazz Collective

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musical history, they would have been playing music that was not far removed from the first documented jazz recording in 1917. Such historicism is not easy: anyone who spends ten years trying to master John Coltrane's early-1960s style must compete not only with his recordings, which are constantly being reissued, but also with the fact that the master himself moved on and left his earlier self — as well as his latter-day imitators — far behind. Such musings make one wary of tribute bands; therefore, I was somewhat apprehensive when I learned that the San Francisco Jazz Collective was coming to the Michigan Theater on Friday, March 31, with a program revisiting the music of Herbie Hancock.

My uneasiness was unfounded. The San Francisco Jazz Collective began in 2004 under the leadership of the well-known saxophonist Joshua Redman. Each year the ensemble focuses on the work of a major jazz figure such as John Coltrane or Ornette Coleman, but rather than simply re-create the master's recordings, let us say in the mold of Lincoln Center, it offers its own take on this music and intersperses those works with original compositions by members of the collective. Listening to the San Francisco Collective's recordings of works by Ornette Coleman, one is struck by the originality of the arrangements and by the fact that no one is imitating anyone from the original recordings.