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Kool Jazz Festival | Civic Auditorium

San Francisco, CA
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10/22/1983
Carlos Santana
Set 1Untitled
Band intro
Prelude To A Kiss
Uncle Bubba
Santana intro
Señor Carlos
Hannibal
Brotherhood
Set 2
Set 3
CommentLineup:
McCoy Tyner - piano
John Blake - violin
John Lee - bass
Wally Fletcher - drums
*Carlos Santana - guitar
Armando Peraza - percussion
Orestes Vilato - percussion
Jazz pianist McCoy Tyner might be known for his work with the
John Coltrane Quartet but in the '70s, he was also experimenting with
world music on albums such as Sahara.

Unless one is a Tyner fan, it is not common to associate the pianist
with Carlos Santana. In the '80s, Tyner was in a Latin phase so the
hook-up with Carlos Santana would seem a natural one. As a result,
Santana appeared on Tyner's 1982 album, Looking Out (which also
featured Stanley Clarke and saxophonist Gary Bartz).
Preparing for his next album (Dimensions, 1984), Tyner showcased
Prelude To A Kiss and Gary Bartz's tribute to T Monk - Uncle Babba -
at this San Francisco show. Still fresh from the previous year's
Looking Out, Tyner roped in Santana for three songs.
While the first track allowed the band to have a good jam and warm up,
it is Duke Ellington's Prelude To A Kiss that showed the finesse that
Tyner displayed straddling between jaunty and romantic jazz.
Three years later, in a general write-up on McCoy Tyner in the
New York Times, John S Wilson commented on Tyner's take on the song:
"The essence of Mr Tyner's burly attack remains evident even when he
plays an unaccompanied piano solo on a normally romantic pastel such
as Duke Ellington's Prelude To A Kiss. After a brief, delicate
statement, the huge waves of rolling lines start falling over one
another while his left hand builds a boiling drive."
Of course the mood takes on a decidedly Latin swing when Santana came
on during the later half. Against a samba backdrop, the piano-guitar
exchange is exhilarating. While some traditional jazz fans might
baulk at the swinging Tyner-Santana team-up, others will rightly feel
that this very good audience recording is a real find.
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