Sax star brings Coltrane to life

Hamilton, Ohio – Christopher Andrews played his first professional saxophone gigs when he was about 18 years old.

By then, he was a veteran performer on the local jazz scene in his native Columbia, South Carolina.

“The jazz stuff comes from my parents,” he said. “They were jazz listeners. Appreciators. I just naturally gravitated to that since I was around it growing up.

“My mother would take me out to jam sessions around town when I was maybe 13. I was walking before I could crawl. I knew how to play, but had no idea what to play.”

Now he knows.

The Christopher Andrews Quintet opens the Jazz & Cabaret series at the Fitton Center for Creative Arts Saturday, October 4, with a deep dive into a sax legend – Giant Steps: The Music of John Coltrane.

Andrews comes at his craft as both an academic and an active practitioner. He has an undergraduate degree in music industry from South Carolina State, a Master’s in jazz studies from the University of South Carolina and is pursuing his Doctor of Musical Arts in saxophone performance at the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music.

He’s been on the faculty at CCM, Northern Kentucky University and Claflin University. In addition to his Quintet, Andrews is a member of the Springfield Symphony Jazz Orchestra and has played with South Carolina Jazz Masterworks Ensemble, Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, Columbus Symphony Orchestra, Lexington Symphony Orchestra, The Harry James Orchestra and Fred Wesley and the New Jb’s.

“What’s appealing to me about (Coltrane’s) music is the level of dedication to his craft,” Andrews said. “Guys like Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins, Johnny Hodges, they were the first. Then Charlie Parker was a lightning bolt. He practiced 12, 15 hours a day. Nobody was as good as Bird because nobody worked like him.

“Coltrane was the first one after him to kind of lead the way. Everybody is still catching up to Coltrane.”

Andrews last played the Fitton Center with trumpeter John Zappa in March of 2022 on Kind of Blue, a Miles Davis tribute show. Coltrane frequently played with Davis in the mid- to late-1950s and Zappa plays trumpet in the Andrews Quintet.

The period immediately after working with Davis led Coltrane to his landmark Giant Steps in 1960, an album selected for the National Record Registry.

“Giant Steps is the best-known album, but we’ll be playing from his whole body of work,” Andrews said. “There’s a lot of music there to explore.

“He incorporated folk, classical, world music. In doing so, he reached into all the world religions, too. There’s a huge spiritual component to his work. It’s very reflective and meditative.”

Andrews said mid-century audiences didn’t always get Coltrane’s music.

“In a way, he was like the artist Jackson Pollock,” he said. “It was avant garde and he lost a lot of followers. But in the years since, people have come to appreciate what he was doing.”

(In fact, Coltrane was posthumously canonized as a saint in 1982 by the African Orthodox Church. The St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church in San Francisco incorporates his music in its liturgies to this day.)

The Giant Steps: The Music of John Coltrane show in the Carruthers Signature Ballroom is sponsored by Geraldine Frechtling & Rick Morner, Vicki Young & Bradly Pickard and Dr. Bennyce Hamilton.

Tickets are $41 for Fitton Center members, $51 for non-members, and are available online right here, by phone at 513-863-8873, ext. 110 or in person at the Fitton Center box office.  Guests may reserve eight-person full and four-person half tables when ordering by phone.

The Fitton Center for Creative Arts is located at 101 S. Monument Avenue on the Riverfront in downtown Hamilton, Ohio.

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