At the beginning of the 1970s, Sam Rivers – the subject of this focus – was 47 years old and already a grandfather. As a musician, however, he was still relatively unknown. His true epiphany came as he approached 50, on a specific date and in a specific place: 6 July 1973, in Montreux, when Claude Nobs, the Swiss festival’s director (and something of a visionary), introduced him with these words: “Those who don’t know Sam Rivers yet are in for a big surprise tonight. He is a musician we have already seen in Europe with Cecil Taylor, and he is coming to us for the first time with his own group.” The performance in question was released by Impulse under the title Streams and, in keeping with the multi-instrumentalist’s nature, unfolds as an uninterrupted sequence of four expository segments, each marked by a different instrument: tenor saxophone, flute, piano […]
Dossier on Sam Rivers
His extraordinary talent emerged late, yet he went on to become one of the defining figures of the so-called post-free movement and a central presence in 1970s jazz. What follows retraces his unique rise to fame.
