| Prophecy | |
| Type: | Live album |
| Artist: | Albert Ayler |
| Cover: | Prophecy (Albert Ayler album).jpg |
| Released: | 1975 |
| Recorded: | June 14, 1964 at the Cellar Café, West 90th Street, New York City |
| Genre: | Free jazz |
| Length: | 41:55 |
| Label: | ESP-Disk ESP 3030 |
| Chronology: | Albert Ayler |
| Prev Title: | Swing Low Sweet Spiritual |
| Prev Year: | 1964 |
| Next Title: | Spiritual Unity |
| Next Year: | 1964 |
Prophecy is a live album by American free jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler recorded in New York City on June 14, 1964 and first released in 1975 on the ESP-Disk label.[1] [2]
The album features Ayler's trio, with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Sunny Murray, and contains five tracks representing roughly half of that evening's concert, which was taped by Paul Haines. A recording of the entire concert, including five additional pieces, was released by the German label In Respect as Albert Smiles With Sunny.[3] According to Sunny Murray, Bernard Stollman, founder of ESP-Disk, "released Prophecy after Albert died, without Albert's signature, but because I also had a copy of the same tape I released mine through a company in Germany... as a correct move for me and Al... [M]y tape was better quality than his and also at the correct speed, so mine sounds better."[4] (According to Val Wilmer, Ayler's recordings for ESP-Disk were made "against the advice of Cecil Taylor and other musicians who thought that artists should hold out for a price commensurate with their talent."[5] Ayler justified his decision, stating: "I felt my art was so important that I had to get it out. At that time I was musically out of this world. I knew I had to play this music for the people."[6])
The additional tracks from Albert Smiles with Sunny were reissued by Revenant Records on . In addition, all of the June 14, 1964 tracks, plus the single May 1, 1965 track from the album Bells, were reissued by ESP-Disk as Bells & Prophecy: Expanded Edition.[7]
The Ayler trio would go on to record Spiritual Unity less than a month later.
The Allmusic review by Scott Yanow awarded the album 3 stars stating: "Ayler alternated the simple march-like themes with wild and very free improvisations which owe little if anything to the bop tradition, or even his contemporaries in the avant-garde. Ayler always had his own individual message, and his ESP sessions find him in consistently explorative form".[8]
The authors of The Penguin Guide to Jazz awarded the album 3½ stars, and stated that the album "was an important session in laying down some of the basic language of the saxophonist's career."
All About Jazz commented: "Though the trio had honed a group sound and method comprising slow and loping or extremely fast themes; Murray's constant percussive chatter and vocal wailing providing an alternate pure-sound springboard; Peacock's constant harmonic filigree creating yet another aural web, these are presented in Prophecy as a much looser framework".[9]
All compositions by Albert Ayler
. Val Wilmer . As Serious as your Life . Serpent's Tail. 2018 . 138 .
. Val Wilmer . As Serious as your Life . Serpent's Tail. 2018 . 139 .