Raymond Boni - Mémoire De L'oubli: Images for Donald Ayler (2021)

"Donald Ayler's Our Prayer has been called one of the greatest compositions of the 1960s, and I remember it vividly as it sounded solemnly in St. Peter's Lutheran Church in central New York. , July 21, 1967, at the funeral of John Coltrane.Our Prayer, as presented that day, could not have been more appropriate then than now ... In June 1965, j read somewhere that a tenor saxophonist was turning the jazz world upside down. I immediately went to New York. I walked into a record store on 8th Avenue and discovered a very curious picture-less album, recorded only on a face, with a logo silkscreened on the other. As I stood with astonished expression, a voice over my right shoulder asked, "What do you think of this? "I replied," I don't know, but I can't wait to hear this music. The man introduced himself saying, 'He's my brother, this is our new recording, I'm Don Ayler and I'm a trumpeter. "The sound of this music launched me on a journey that continues to this day ... With this album an extraordinary tribute to a musician too long eclipsed and sadly forgotten by a community which owes so much to his influence, we will now have time to contemplate the gift of Donald Ayler. Raymond Boni is the one who knows and appreciates the contributions that Donald Ayler has made to our collective freedom, and who has understood that freedom is a work in progress - who will never be finished. The sounds of his guitar echo the incandescent cry of love from Donald Ayler's trumpet and offer a poetic resonance to his life. Donald is gone, but he is not forgotten. " Joe McPHEE