Saxophonist John Coltrane first approached this style, one might even say he created it with his Meditations (1965). But the shift lost some of his audience, particularly because free jazz prefers exaltation and emotion to a coherent, easily identifiable melodic structure. The free sound is instrument-as-catharsis, not instrument-as-entertainment. Furthermore, free jazz endeavors for the transcendental, as a child leaps higher and higher for a something just out of reach, and the musician expects his audience to join him in this exercise. With each note the free jazzman hopes to purge himself of both demons and delights, and inch ever closer to God.

Now 50-years-old and a long-time veteran of the free jazz circuit, David S. Ware personifies this ideology. But is he successful in his efforts to push free jazz further?

"Well, if the music is worthy of that, it's fine. Someone has to assume a leadership position," says Ware from his home in New Jersey. "To be frank about it, it's something I've been after for a long time, but from a position of creative mantle. Just like a boxing or track star, you want to be the champion. If we're on the top, we're on the top. And that's good. But it's not the print that does that, it's the music."

Corridors & Parallels is a collaborative effort with Ware acting in the role of unifier, as content to linger in the shadows as he is confident to take center stage. The quartet, of course, is not Ware alone: he is joined by bassist William Parker, pianist Matthew Shipp and drummer Guillermo E. Brown (replacing Susie Ibarra), all of whom are universally recognized as solid talents on their respective instruments. Whereas previous releases witnessed the trio trying their best to orbit around the erratic course taken by their bandleader, the latest release from the David S. Ware Quartet is an experiment in anarchy. There are three transitional tracks--an introduction, an intermission and a closing--in which Ware does not even appear.

"You have to ask my producer [the reason why]," Ware explains. "Because we're using a new instrumentation, we just decided to try it like that. A trio creates a certain sound. You have to let things breathe a bit. There's always a need to stretch out." Their stretching, as it turns out, more resembles full-scale acrobatics. The four players each tug in their own direction, forcing the music to expand and contract and behave like something unpredictable, something complex and organic.

Anarchy lends itself to certain extremes. "Straight Track" is rife with these excesses, losing its momentum long before the group decides to pull together and drive forward. Shipp's keyboard calls out, Ware echoes, the bass climbs and descends, and the drums seem to announce something that never arrives. Full of computer blips and interplanetary static, "Jazz Fi-Sci" follows, with Ware rocketing at light speed through chords and scales; one if forced to wait until "Superimposed," already well into the album, before the quartet is prepared to demonstrate the difference between potential and kinetic creative energy.

"This record is an improvised record. There was no rehearsal," Ware clarifies. "With that, you still have things that could've been written." For this reason, Ware says that Corridors && Parallels is not an album in the conventional sense of the word, which complements his principle of emotional ad-libbing and justifies the critical acclaim the result has generated. Perhaps the track that best illustrates the band's openness to a natural musical evolution is the final full-quartet piece, "Mother, May You Rest in Bliss." It is a vigorous, gospelized eulogy for Ware's mother Lucille, who passed away in 2001. "I don't name pieces before, always after. When I listened to it, I heard her personality couple with it. It was a spontaneous thing."

Ware has come a long way since his days with the band Apogee at the Boston's Berklee School of Music, and his early performances with Cecil Taylor and Andrew Cyrille in the 1970s and '80s. Although Ware says he was "was raised with Coltrane," he knows that any given music trend is ephemeral; that music itself is an expression seized in one given moment with only a hope that it finds roots in the permanent. So he does acknowledge that the era when Coltrane began his somewhat lonesome quest for the sublime has passed: "The times are two totally different universes. There's no comparison."

Coltrane is also not his only influence. Nor is he the only notable in the history of free jazz. "There are a whole lot of cats: Sun Ra, John Gilmore," says Ware, citing Sun Ra as an "undeniable, unforgettable" influence. "The critics usually focus on a few artists and there are a whole lot left out for one reason or another."

He has, on the other hand, built on the foundation that Coltrane established. "I found a way to use modal music and modal ideas and move around in the modal world without copying him. I found a new way to do it without that expense, to broaden it, rather than to just copy over the top of it." Therefore Coltrane's influences shape Ware's philosophy without limiting it.

The additional problem for Ware is that something vital that goes missing when free jazz is experienced via recorded media. The absence of a visual element limits its appeal to only one human sense, causing the listener to look for clues and direction, and to grope for familiar touchstones like a distinct melody. While Ware asserts that his music is very melodic, his chosen style of jazz is best experienced live. The shrieks and extended breaths of his sax and the space-age ballet of Shipp's synthesizer cannot be fully appreciated when the performers are several times removed. Onstage, Ware can establish a rapport between his audience and his band mates and, once engaged, surge ahead on his spiritual quest. Most folks who listen to free jazz--I should even include myself among them--aren't always going to comprehend what they hear. It requires a greater context. Without it, the music could be heard as nothing more than children loose in the studio. We must understand the performer before we can appreciate the music.

Ware disagrees. "Of course it's just as accessible" as other forms of music, he insists. "The audience can reach it right away. And we're going to get a lot deeper to be even more accessible." This rationale poses a problem. As any pop star will tell you, more profundity isn't the best way to attract a wider audience. Ware, it seems, has no grasp of the commercial dynamic. This is because there is no place for it in his music. The heart will only yield pure art.

This basic misunderstanding may also be why his professional relationship with Sony's Columbia Records came to an end last year, shortly after the release of Surrendered. And it could also explain why he was immediately welcomed back to AUM Fidelity, a fiercely independent Brooklyn-based outfit that promotes the free, or avant-garde, sound. Ware and his band mates had recorded with AUM Fidelity before in 1997 for Wisdom of Uncertainty.

In the face of steadily growing critical support, that one person likely failed to see Ware's intense style of free jazz as a profitable music. Now, as if to flaunt the legitimacy of the David S. Ware Quartet, Corridors & Parallels has raised eyebrows among more people than just the jazz underground. Long regarded as overly sophisticated and obtuse, Ware believes that his music is truly a popular one, i.e., for the people, because the spiritual element in his music is not just found in the artistic inspiration. The music acts as a vehicle for the divine conversation, too, and this manifold stimulation offers a unique experience.

"The reason I say that is not out of ego, but because the forces I deal with are not your everyday forces," Ware confides with a hint of complacency. "I meditate daily. I'm in contact with some really powerful forces. They do come out in my music, because the music is my dharma. They are the message behind the music. If people are sensitive enough, then they'll pick up on it. And that power can be translated into intellectuality."

Then he waves away his self-assurance and sounds dismissive: "I could say all kinds of things. What has to be done is for people to just keep listening. See it live. They may get one thing one way and one thing another."

In spite of his position as jazz icon, Ware is hesitant to comment on the future of the music. "I can't speak for everything that's going on. I don't know why other cats are playing, but I know why I'm playing. Where is jazz headed? Jazz is headed towards itself. It's like the universe."

"With this band," he continues, "it's forever exploding. It's seeking itself, oneness. My music is seeking its own level. It's without bounds because the forces we deal with are without bounds. It's up to us to fulfill that. We have to be without bounds."