HASAAN IBN ALI
Genres: Hard Bop, Post Bop • United States

Hasaan Ibn Ali was a jazz pianist and composer from Philadelphia who is celebrated as a seminal theorist and technician, as well as a dominating influence on all the jazz musicians who came into contact with him there. Saxophonist Odean Pope, who played with him extensively during the 1960s and '70s, claims that the dense harmonic conception John Coltrane developed for Giant Steps and his later "sheets of sound" approach were directly derived from Ibn Ali's music and ideas; they knew one another well and informally played together during the early 1950s. The pianist's journey is largely apocryphal, however. He issued only one recording during his lifetime. The Max Roach Trio Featuring the Legendary Hasaan was issued by Atlantic in 1965. All seven tunes were composed by Ibn Ali and performed with Roach and bassist Art Davis. Though it was recorded with the idea of making the pianist a top-tier read more...