Gary Bartz Previews 50th Anniversary ‘Another Earth’ Winter JazzFest Show With Pharoah Sanders

Giorgio Perottino / Stringer – Gary Bartz
Gary Bartz performs at the 2018 Torino Jazz Festival.

Fifty years ago, between stints in the bands of Charles Mingus, Max Roach and Miles Davis, alto saxophonist Gary Bartz embarked on a solo career that would eventually lead to him being a leading light of the fusion movement in the 1970s. Inspired by the music of John Coltrane and his epic A Love Supreme, Bartz recorded Another Earth in 1968, which will receive a special performance from Bartz and Pharoah Sanders at the Winter JazzFest in New York on Jan. 10.

“There was a time in the ‘60s, with all the upheavals, when I came of age and I was considering doing something else,” Bartz says from his home in Oakland, Calif. “I felt like there was no need for more musicians — we have enough. Through knowing and working with Max Roach and being around Charlie Mingus and John Coltrane, I saw that music can serve needs. That made me rededicate myself to music.

“It was around that time I had read that Beethoven would write a light symphony, like the Pastoral, and would follow that with a really heavy thing, so I took that concept. My first album, Libra, was more of a light thing, a book of short stories. My second, Another Earth, is a novel.”

A native of Baltimore, Bartz underscored his music ballast with a move to New York in 1958 to attend Juilliard and study composition. There, for the first time in his life, he had regular access to a piano. He spent the early 1960s piano-less, acquiring one right before recording “Another Earth.” At the same time, he was developing his interest in astronomy and charting the skies — he also believes he has seen two UFOs — and Another Earth’s song titles reflect that interest: “UFO,” “Dark Nebula,” “Perihelion and “Aphelon.” “Lost in the Stars,” he says, “was really right up Another Earth’s alley. I loved Kurt Weill and I love the fact that on Earth we’re on the outskirts of the Milky Way. We’re not in the downtown areas so to speak.”

Bartz, 78, spent a good chunk of December transcribing the music he recorded with Sanders, trumpeter Charles Tolliver, pianist Stanley Cowell, bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Freddie Waits back in June 1968. While the album’s songs have made their way into his sets, he’s never performed the title piece live, giving the concert at Le Poisson Rouge an added appeal.

“It was an important record at the time and it has not received the kind of attention it deserves,” says Winter Jazz Fest founder and curator Brice Rosenbloom, who was approached by the Revive Music agency and Bartz to do the show. “A really young audience attends the festival and pays attention to the bookings so it’s important to remind that audience of some of the strides predecessors made with impactful music.”

Bartz has no plans to do any other performances of Another Earth and is currently focused on planning a tour of Australia and returning to his teaching job of nearly two decades at Oberlin College in Ohio. “Another Earth is my tribute to life, really,” he says. “I believe there’s life all over this universe.”

The Bartz/Sanders performance is part of the Winter JazzFest that wraps with the two-day Marathon on Friday and Saturday at 11 venues in Manhattan.