Finn’s c.v. ranges from studies with greats like J.R. Monterose and Roland Hanna to collaborations with saxophoniste maudit Arthur Rhames to dues-paying in r’n’b bands to work with Ben Harper to a degree in composition – but as far as the record-buying public is concerned he was invisible until the 2004 release of Opening the Gates, a storming trio set with Dominic Duval and Whit Dickey. It’s something of a marvel, given his diverse career, that Finn’s music is the reverse of eclectic: it’s late Coltrane you hear in every phrase. I suppose you could complain of narrowness or unoriginality, but it doesn’t work out that way: somehow all that wealth of playing experience, as well as spiritual and personal experience (see his online bio for details), is audible in his music. What Finn’s got – what mere Trane copyists never get no matter how hard they try – is that sense of calm authority that radiated from everything Coltrane played, so that even the quietest note strikes the ear like a muezzin call. Finn’s first utterance on Faith in a Seed – a brief, rising motif in B-flat– has the force of a summons; the listener can’t help but respond. He’s an eloquent – almost hypnotic – improviser, but once you’re hooked in it’s clear that (as in Coltrane) this is a piercing, self-reflexive eloquence, almost destructively turned back on itself. Listening to Faith in a Seed is a far more intimately wrenching experience than countless ballsy blowouts – Finn’s music works from the inside out, the climaxes coming for the listener with the force of an internal revelation.

Without wanting to disparage the excellent Opening the Gates, I’d nonetheless say that the new album improves on it in several ways. The switch of drummer is a plus: Warren Smith’s precise, gracious drumming is a better foil than Dickey’s bluster, and is better served by the recording. The program is also more varied, mixing swingers and meterless pieces, blowouts and hymns. The trio tackles free-time pieces at a measured, natural pace; it’s on the in-tempo pieces that the album’s tensest and most inflammatory moments occur, above all on the extraordinary 17-minute piece “A Weathered Spirit Resolute.” It’s a performance that creeps up on you slowly, its bobbing horn figure and chattering three-against-two groove at first curiously inviting, before the music closes round like dense rainforest jungle. The first half of the piece is intense; the second is far more than that – Finn plays with such appalling, newfound ferocity that it’s like jumping from Mach 1 to Mach 2. It’s not the only track where he shows an uncanny ability to get under your skin: Faith in a Seed is music in search of the sublime, gorgeous and frightening at the same time.

This is the second disc of Finn’s I’ve heard and still I get a “where did this guy come from?” buzz from it: how did a player this good stay unknown this long? While the idiom he’s working in is familiar enough, it’s a rare pleasure to hear it played this well – from the “inside,” as it were. Despite the pervasive debt to Coltrane, I get a stronger sense every time I listen to Faith in a Seed of a musical original. Check him out, pronto.

Nate Dorward

Cadence, March 2005