John O’Gallagher’s Ancestral: A Landmark Collaboration Between Two Jazz Drum Masters

Whirlwind Recordings presents Ancestral, the remarkable new release from alto saxophonist and composer John O’Gallagher, featuring the first-ever recorded collaboration between the legendary drummers Andrew Cyrille and Billy Hart, with Ben Monder on guitar. Available now in CD, LP, and digital formats, Ancestral (WR4840) represents a transformative chapter in O’Gallagher’s artistic life—an album that bridges scholarship, experience, and deep musical intuition.

Recorded at Sound on Sound Studios in Montclair, New Jersey, in January 2024, Ancestral reflects the fruits of O’Gallagher’s doctoral research into the music of John Coltrane, particularly the saxophonist’s late-period works Interstellar Space and Stellar Regions. As O’Gallagher explains, “My PhD is an analysis where I transcribed all of Trane’s solos, showing that free music is not as free as people think. Coltrane was organizing his improvisations, and that research helped me find new freedom inside my own systems—freedom that feels organic.”

The album arrives after a major period of change for O’Gallagher, who left Brooklyn for the UK before settling in Lisbon, Portugal, with his wife. This geographical and personal transformation finds expression throughout the record’s eight tracks, which unfold as both introspection and renewal. With an ensemble that unites two drumming titans—Cyrille and Hart—the album’s soundworld is one of depth, tension, and release.

Ancestral opens with “Awakening,” a slow, spectral dawn of mallets, guitar, and saxophone, building toward a muscular crescendo. “‘Awakening’ felt ancient and organic, like a folk song that grows in intensity until it bursts into light,” O’Gallagher says. “Under the Wire” dances on a Monkish groove—playful and percussive—while “Contact,” improvised by Monder, Cyrille, and Hart, inhabits an eerie, floating space. On “Tug,” the drummers weave a regal, tensile pulse beneath O’Gallagher’s searching lines. “‘Tug’ is about the way time breathes,” he notes. “Andrew and Billy are pulling and laying down the time simultaneously—it’s so beautiful.”

Elsewhere, “Profess” swirls with an airy momentum reminiscent of Paul Motian’s work, while “Altar of the Ancestors” reaches toward Coltrane’s spiritual urgency—music as invocation and homage. “‘This is the altar at which we pay homage to our forefathers,’” O’Gallagher reflects. “‘The bandstand itself becomes sacred.’” “Quixotica” disorients with shifting loops and melodies that subtly change each time they return, while the closing track, “Postscript,” entirely improvised, offers a serene conclusion—an open-ended reflection on an album defined by discovery.

Ancestral is an album of questions rather than answers—a dialogue between eras, geographies, and generations. It’s about what happens when master musicians listen, respond, and evolve together in real time. With Cyrille and Hart’s first recorded collaboration, Monder’s signature harmonic textures, and O’Gallagher’s fearless vision, Ancestral captures the vitality of improvisation as both ritual and rebirth.

The recording was engineered by David Amlen, mixed by André Fernandes at Estúdio Timbuktu, and mastered by Mário Barreiros. Album artwork was created by Jamie Breiwick and O’Gallagher himself, with photography by Owen Howard.