| Jazz |
John O’Gallagher’s ‘Ancestral’ Finds Illumination in the Shadows of Coltrane
In a year already filled with remarkable jazz releases, few have struck as deeply as Ancestral, the new album from saxophonist John O’Gallagher. Just when the listening season seemed to settle, O’Gallagher arrived with a work so searching, so intellectually charged, it feels like both a personal rebirth and an artistic reckoning.
Recorded in January 2024 at Sound on Sound Studios in Montclair, N.J., Ancestral draws inspiration from O’Gallagher’s doctoral research on John Coltrane, but it is no academic exercise. It’s a document of transformation, the sound of an artist shedding his old skin. After leaving Brooklyn, O’Gallagher moved first to the United Kingdom with his wife, and then settled permanently in Lisbon, Portugal. That transatlantic journey, paired with deep scholarly reflection, reshaped his creative voice.
“The form matters less than the intention,” O’Gallagher writes on his website, a phrase that could serve as a manifesto for Ancestral. The album features a formidable lineup, Ben Monder on guitar, Andrew Cyrille on drums, and Billy Hart on percussion, and much of it was captured in first takes, adding a raw, urgent energy.
The compositions range from fully written pieces to skeletal sketches and collective improvisations. That spareness becomes a defining quality: Ancestral feels like an exposed framework, a structure built not to contain ideas but to let them breathe. The rhythm section pulses like a heartbeat while O’Gallagher’s saxophone navigates an unruly landscape, one that oscillates between mathematical order and emotional release.
Far from a nostalgic “return to roots,” Ancestral unfolds like an initiation ritual. It calls for a rare kind of listening, active, patient, attuned. One track, “Postscript,” is entirely improvised, as if the musicians had to, at some point, abandon all certainties. It’s a release, a step beyond codes and habits, a refusal to over-intellectualize. O’Gallagher and his bandmates push toward a place where creation becomes exploration, and risk becomes revelation.
The album invites comparison not only to Coltrane but also to the late painter Pierre Soulages, who found infinite shades of light within black. Soulages once said: “You’re right to call it black because it’s made with a single pigment… but what interests me is the reflection of light on the surface, the variations that emerge.”
That statement could easily describe O’Gallagher’s approach. Ancestral asks us to listen beyond the surface, to hear light refracted through density, discipline, and doubt. In that space, somewhere between intellect and intuition, a luminous poetry takes shape.
Thierry De Clemensat
Member at Jazz Journalists Association
USA correspondent for Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief – Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, October 14th 2025
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Musicians :
John O’Gallagher – alto saxophone
Ben Monder – guitar
Andrew Cyrille – drums
Billy Hart – drums
ALBUM CREDITS:
Recorded at Sound on Sound, Montclair N.J.
Engineered by David Amlen
Mixed by André Fernandes / Estúdio Timbuktu
Mastered by Mário Barreiros
Producer – John O’gallagher
Executive Producer – Michael Janisch
Photography by Owen Howard
Album Original Artwork by Jamie Breiwick and John O’gallagher
Graphic Design for CD & LP by Bside Graphics