Spirits Rejoice!

English edition

No music fluctuated as sharply between extremes as his: folk song, march, or acoustic apocalypse—everything was possible in Albert Ayler's sound cosmos. With his furious instrumental glossolalia and his pathos-laden ballads, the musician from Cleveland, Ohio, quickly became the most radical of the free jazz expressionists of the 1960s. Albert Ayler transformed the saxophone into a different instrument, and even John Coltrane's late work was unmistakably influenced by his younger colleague. He had little time to spread his message of a new spiritual music: in 1970, at the age of just 34, Albert Ayler died under mysterious circumstances.

Peter Niklas Wilson spent six months in the US following in Albert Ayler's footsteps. Through conversations with numerous contemporary witnesses (including Ayler's father and brother, as well as drummers Sunny Murray and Milford Graves, violinist Michael Samson, multi-instrumentalist Howard Johnson, and bassists Gary Peacock and Steve Tintweiss) and analysis of Ayler's published and unpublished recordings, he reconstructs the biography and erratic musical path of this prophet of the "new thing."
Second edition, expanded to include an index.

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