Grandpa’s Spells

The reputation of John Tchicai within the international jazz community is closely linked to the time he spent in the United States during the mid-1960s.The alto saxophone work of Tchicai at the 1962 Helsinki World Youth Festival caught the ears of Archie Shepp and Bill Dixon who advised him to move to New York. He had already met Albert Ayler in Copenhagen that same year, and in his four years in the U.S.A., he worked with Shepp and Don Cherry and in his own New York Art Quartet, co-led with trombonist Roswell Rudd.