1998 · Album
Go See the World
Recorded 1997 · Columbia Records · Produced by Not specified
The Coltrane Quartet Reimagined for the Late '90s
David S. Ware has honed a unique voice on the tenor saxophone with an accomplished band behind him.
The first thing that strikes you about Go See the World (1998) is how Susie Ibarra's drumming transforms what could have been a straightforward saxophone-piano-bass trio into something restless and alive. She doesn't keep time so much as interrogate it, pushing and pulling against David S. Ware's sheets of tenor sound, making space for Matthew Shipp's piano to slip in sideways. This is a working band, not a studio assembly, and you hear it immediately.
Ware's move to Columbia marked a watershed moment — major label backing for a musician deep in the free jazz tradition was rare. The album repays that faith without compromise. William Parker anchors everything on bass with a presence so solid it feels architectural, while Shipp plays with rare restraint, knowing exactly when to step back and let Ware breathe. The saxophonist's tone here is full-bodied and searching, less raw than on earlier records but no less committed. These are long, patient pieces built on conversation rather than solos, with Ibarra's drums providing the friction that keeps everything from settling.
The Penguin Guide to Jazz called it exquisitely recorded and noted the Coltrane Quartet parallel — late-period Coltrane without the spiritual incantation, just four musicians locked in genuine dialogue. If you're coming to Ware's work for the first time, start here. This is the album where he sounds most like himself and most fully realized.
Who's playing
Where next?
More by David S. Ware
Live in Sant’Anna Arresi, 2004 2016
Organica (solo saxophones, volume 2)
Surrendered 2000
Saturnian (Solo Saxophones, Volume 1) 2010
The musicians on this record
♫
New World Pygmies 1998
William Parker
plays bass here
plays bass here
♫
Bendito of Santa Cruz 1997
Matthew Shipp
plays piano here
plays piano here
