Andrew Cyrille - Special People

I remember meeting Andrew Cyrille for the first time - was it 1997? I picked him up at the Port Columbus, Ohio airport. he was performing with David Murray, Oliver Lake (one-half of The World Saxophone Quartet), and Santi Debriano at Ohio Dominican College (now a university). Mr. Cyrille is a muscular, compact man. When I tried to lift his cymbals, he said to me, "You'd better let me handle them - I'm used to lifting them". They were very heavy. Percussionists travel with their cymbals and drum-sticks, while assembling the remainder of the drum kit from local sources.
  Andrew Cyrille is a master musician, a master percussionist, and teacher. He played with Coleman Hawkins, Cecil Taylor, and, more recently as co-leader, with Oliver Lake and Reggie Workman in the group TrioThree. I won't try to describe Cyrille's percussion magic, except by way of a hearing example - a sound experiment.
  There's a Jimmy Smith CD, Cool Blues, that has Smith's regular drummer, Donald Bailey on tracks 4-8. On tracks 1-3 Art Blakey is the drummer. David Bailey is a fine drummer - very subtle musician. But when Art Blakey occupies the drum chair, there pulse-magic - Blakey fills the musical space with pop. When Blakey doesn't fill the space, when, as it seems to me, he's creating rhythmic suspense; he surprises us with a rhythmic constellation consisting of the high-hat and sock cymbals with simple quiet rim shots on the snare drum. It's beats of 1, 2 & 3 then no 4. The listener adds the 4th beat that Blakey withholds. This way Blakey and the listener collaborate in creating a rhythmic pulse. I'm listening to Jimmy Smith's recording of the The Sermon.
  Compare the Billy Hart interview with Ethan Iverson http://dothemath.typepad.com/dtm/interview-with-billy-hart.html. Donald Bailey and Jimmy Cobb are time keepers par excellence. Art Blakey, Billy Hart, and Andrew Cyrille seem, to my amateur’s ears, play in and out of time. Read what Whitney Balliett has to say in his piece, “Roach, Blakey & P. J. Jones”. Balliett was obsessed with drummers. Among his favorite swing-masters were Jimmy Crawford and “Big” Sid Catlett,  Jo Jones, and Elvin Jones. Balliett didn’t care for Max Roach’s “typewritter style” of playing; while Roy Haynes’s playing tended to be too loud.
  Andrew Cyrille is a pulse-master in the Blakey-sense. The recordings of Andrew Cyrille with Jeanne Lee and Jimmy Lyons, with Ted Daniel and David Ware (R.I.P), with Jimmy Lyons, and Trio Three are worth attending to. Like Art Blakey, Andrew Cyrille creates his own groove; he propels the musicians and the music both inside the pocket and out.
  Pete La Roca, another master percussionist, died on Monday, at the age of 74. See Ethan Iverson's tribute. http://dothemath.typepad.com/
  Andy Hamilton's appreciation of Pete La Roca:
http://www.andyhamilton.org.uk/andy_pdfs/Swings_The_Thing.pdf