The Free Jazz Collective

Gianni Gebbia - Petrichor (objet-a, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

“To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is not to have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything”. (J.W. von Goethe)

If there's one artist who embodies the layered, cultured, and restless soul of Sicily, it's Gianni Gebbia. But beware, his musical lexicon is never a regionalist language, but always an extraordinary, challenging, universal Esperanto. Born in Palermo in 1961, he taught himself jazz by gaining experience in numerous Sicilian groups and orchestras and participating in jam sessions with passing American musicians. Like all men from the islands, he couldn't resist the call of the Horizon Line, and in 1980 he moved to New York, where he experienced the "no wave" movement and the last glimmers of the loft scene. During those same years, he attended the legendary University of the Streets on the Lower East Side, directed by saxophonist Muhammad Salahuddeen, before moving to Paris in 1984 to study with Jean-Claude Forenbach and Alan Silva. In 1990, he performed solo at the FMP “Total Music Meeting” in Berlin alongside musicians such as Steve Lacy and Lindsey Cooper, and since 1991, he has collaborated with German percussionist Guenter Baby Sommer and double bassist Peter Kowald, thus reuniting one of the most telluric duos of European free jazz. In 1993 he formed the folk-improv project “Terra Arsa” along with Vittorio Villa and singer Miriam Palma. In recent years, performances have been frequent alongside contemporary and butoh dancers (Masaki Iwana, Tadashi Endo, Antonio Carallo, Julie Stanzak, Yves Musard), poets (Alberto Masala), videomakers (Salvo Cuccia), film and theatre directors (Raul Ruiz, Roberto Andò, Jerome Savary, Guido Chiesa, Vanessa Redgrave, Heiner Goebbels, Aurelien Bory, Stefania Casini, Davide Riondino, Luca Guadagnino, Pina Bausch), visual artists (Toti Garraffa, Nicola Console, Martha Keller, Georgina Starr) and circus artists (Francois Chat, Vera Mormino). The collaborations in the musical field are impressive: Heiner Goebbels, David Moss, Zu, Otomo Yoshihide, Fred Frith, Anatoly Vapirov, Vladimir Tarasov, Jean Marc Montera, Dominique Regef, Louis Sclavis, Pino Minafra, Jim O' Rourke, Lee Ranaldo, Glen Velez, Benoit Delbecq, Noel Akchoté, Antonello Salis, Sergey Kuryokhin, Henri Kaiser, Michel Doneda, Takaoka Daysuke, Shin'ichi Isohata, Reiko Imanishi, Garth Powell, Evan Parker, Francesco Cusa, Domenico Sciajno, Butch Morris, Lukas Ligeti, Elliot Sharp, Shin'ichi Isohata, William Wynant, Satoko Fuji, Dominique Regef, Benoit Delbecq, Lawrence Butch Morris, Wadada Leo Smith, Milford Graves, to name some. Gebbia's ongoing projects in recent years include “Trionacria” alongside Roy Paci on trumpet and Francesco Cusa on drums,“Switters” with Francesco Cusa and Vince Vasi, and “Zen Widow” with Californians Garth Powell and Matt Goodheart. His solo work has continued steadily since 1990. In 2011, he played with Eiko Ishibashi, both in a duo and a trio with bassist Daniele Camarda. In 2013, he formed a new band, “Magnetic Trio”, with which, for his own label “objet-a”, he reinterprets all the compositions created from the 1980s to the present, as a sort of compendium of all his musical experiences. In 2020, he formed the open project "The Fruitful Darkness”, which features Massimo Pupillo and Tony Buck. In 2024, as “The Mayfield” (Heiner Goebbels, Willi Bopp, Cecile Lartigau, Nicolas Perrin, and Camille Emaille), he released an extraordinary album with Intakt Records. In recent years, he has begun studying and using Indian bansuri flutes in his performances, and he cultivates his study of Indian music, having attended courses with the renowned Maestro Hariprasad Chaurasia and his students Debopriya and Suchismita Chatterjee. This interest led to the solo albums “Vapor” and "Calor”, where Gebbia primarily uses the bansuri flute, and the same occurs in Petrichor. Titled with a neologism that combines the Greek words "Petra" (boulder, stone) and "Ichor" (sap), referring to the scent of rain on dry earth, the album unfolds across 11 tracks, all under three minutes, suspended between ambient atmospheres, micro-variations of sound, and sensorial perceptions. The textures of Indian wind instruments and electronics play with Eastern influences without folkloric shortcuts or implausible xerox-effects, but rather through a unique interpretation by someone who has embraced those cultural styles in their soul, even before than in their musical technique. In a single track ("Metabolico"), Gianni returns to the soprano saxophone, while the 11 minutes extended bonus track ("Zazeela") pays homage to Marian Zazeela (April 15, 1940-March 28, 2024), a New York-based artist and musician, member of the experimental music collective "Theater of Eternal Music," known for her collaboration with her husband, composer La Monte Young. For those who dug Shabaka's shakuhachi period but a really great record per se.

PETRICHOR by Gianni Gebbia

Sunday Video - Simon Rose solo

noreply@blogger.com (Stef Gijssels) — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 13:52:55 +0000

Our Sunday video this week offers a beautiful, intimate and well-recorded - both sound and editing - solo performance by British saxophonist Simon Rose, here on baritone. The video lasts only 20 minutes but is a great testimony for Rose's art: captivating, sensitive, explorative, adventurous, physical and as said, also intimate.

I can only advise readers to check out his albums we reviewed on our blog, starting with Vienna Solo, equally from 2024.

Performed at Acker Stadt Palast, Berlin. Curated by Volker Meitz, who also managed the sound and the mixing. Video recording: Florian Japp Editing: Per Jörgen Erkius.

Signe Emmeluth, Dag Erik Knedal Andersen, and Magnus Skavhaug Nergaard - Live at The All Ears Festival (Sonic Transmissions, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Brian Earley

Signe Emmeluth, the alto saxophonist/composer/band leader/new Danish Thing progenitor/and hyperdynamic cosmic dynamo, burns bright in 2026. I have written about the artist’s work on numerous occasions for the Free Jazz Collective, as have my colleagues (if you missed it and you dig Signe, you need to read this review of Emmeluth’s stunning recording with MoE and Ikuro Takahashi by William Rossi).

What more can Emmeluth give us? I mean, it seems every time I communicate with someone about her, superlatives in the realms of incredible, amazing, or even somehow unexpected are thrown about. My reaction to this may be to say that the English language falls short. These adjectives are not only deserved and accurate, but like all words, they absolutely fail to relay what makes her so special. In 2026 alone Signe has appeared on at least three albums I think may be the album of the year (I have in mind We Vote Force Majeure by Hyper Elastic Jinx, With Love by the Amoeba, and the aforementioned Live at Børsen Kulturhus with MoE and Ikuro Takahashi). She has appeared on numerous other works this year, and will appear on yet another recording with guitarist Karl Borja this coming October. And the range of these recordings is just as sweeping: experimental music versions of compositional suite, punk rock, and new age folk.

On this new release with bassist Magnus Skavhaug Nergaard and drummer/percussionist Dag Erik Knedal Andersen, Emmeluth finds herself this time in a pure free jazz context. What I mean by this is Live at All Ears documents three musicians playing with no prior plan. This is a live set including only one 37 minute take consisting essentially of two tracks. The three allow the music to develop organically in the moment through deep listening, inventive contributions, and intuitive communal connections.

The first of the two works presented here does the bulk of the heavy lifting. Running over 27 minutes, this piece demonstrates all of what these three make function so well. The work opens quietly, with Signe tonguing and repeating an impromptu motif built around a single bent, squeaky note. Knedal Andersen soon enters with bells and overtones from cymbals bowed with sticks. Skavhaug Nergaard simultaneously begins to pluck harmonics on his bass in the album’s first display of a kind of spontaneous communication that appears to fall somewhere between a magic trick and instrumental mastery. The reality, of course, is the three from the outset display the kind of intuitive connection one finds only in the very best moments of free improvisation.

Each musician continues to provide momentum by contributing new developments or by responding to a contribution by another member. Moments like those around the 4:25 or 19:30 marks allow the listener to realize it is fruitless to determine who is the leader and who is the follower on this date as the musicians operate as one collective body of sound. As I listened to this piece, I found myself surprised again and again at how many times I could not figure out whether certain sounds were being created by the drum kit, the double bass, or the alto saxophone. These, after all, are pretty different sounding instruments. Somehow, nonetheless, moments like those around 6:00 or 8:40 provide a wonderful blending and confusion of sonic voices.

The second work runs much shorter at around eight and a half minutes in length. This piece features a prickly start-and-stop collective improvisatory approach, and one of the highlights for me is the theme Emmeluth conjures into being. I do not know if Signe does so intentionally, but the leitmotif here is a melodic fragment used at times by Peter Brötzmann throughout his career. Shortly after Peter’s passing, I remember feeling deeply moved by the posthumous release of Chicken Shit Bingo with the saxophone giant and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love. The theme one hears throughout the second work on Live at All Ears is similar to that played by Peter in “Smuddy Water” on that record.

Emmeluth, Knedal Andersen, and Skavhaug Nergaard manifest interplay and equity for listeners on this Sonic Transmissions release. Exploration, vulnerability, and adventure occupy equally important roles performed with spontaneity and unity. And, if you care to hear what humans sound like at their best when they get together, work together, and create together, I highly recommend giving At All Ears a listen.

Live at the All Ears Festival can be listened to here:

Live At The All Ears Festival by Emmeluth : Knedal Andersen : Skavhaug Nergaard .

Rodrigo Amado & David Maranha - Desolation Row (European Echoes, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Paul Acquaro

It’s a slow burn and one that is quickly alight. From the opening moments of the album through its mid-way wanderings to its tense, and then suddenly gentle closing bars, we hear a consistent lightly dissonant thrum from David Maranha colorful electric organ and the eviscerating emotional tones of Rodrigo Amado’s tenor sax. One could easily slap the label spiritual jazz to this music as it truly seems to climb up from somewhere deep within both musicians, but there is more to it than that.

Over the course of 41 minutes, the one uninterrupted track of Desolation Row throbs and pulsates with an urgency that is palpable. Throughout, Maranha lays down a harmonic wave pool that flows and rolls with unrelenting, but calm, ferocity. For Amado, he does the opposite, his melodic ideas sail over these boiling waters with a confidence and focused energy, only once or twice going so far as to sonically abuse the instrument’s mechanics. It's quite easy to form a mental image of Amado’s veins pulsating as he pushes his instrument to its melodic limits.

Recorded live at the OUT.FEST in the outskirts of Lisbon in October 2025, Desolation Row follows the duo’s well-received Wrecks released the year before. Looking across both titles, one can hear, aside from the titular reference to Bob Dylan’s surreal masterpiece from 1965’s Highway 65 Revisited, which surveyed the cultural and political landscapes of its times with a prematurely cynical eye, an allusion, or acknowledgement, of decay. The music across both of this duo's albums is indeed foreboding and laced with a discernible disquiet — fitting for our current times. This is where the aforementioned spirituality meets current events, surveying and synthesizing the turmoil in the world and channeling it into something terrifying and lovely.

There is, however, more sense of hope on Desolation Row than on Wrecks. While Amado is still explosive, he has a slightly lighter melodic touch here. Similarly with Maranha, his organ playing is a little less abrasive and sharp edged. I was happy to survive Wrecks and I’ve come back multiple times to Desolation Row. You should too.

Desolation Row by David Maranha / Rodrigo Amado

Jon Raskin - Live at Celeste (self-released, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Hrayr Attarian

Saxophonist Jon Raskin is a restlessly innovative improviser who excels in the company of like-minded musicians. His discography is rich in collaborative and spontaneously created works that show seamless camaraderie. Live at Celesteis one such example. Celeste is a Vienna venue that hosts improvisation sessions on Monday nights, a series that bass clarinetist Susanna Garmayer curates. On November 4th, 2024, Raskin, with frequent collaborator Thomas Lehn on synthesizers and bassist Matija Schellander, performed a single 31-minute multilayered piece that is vibrant, intriguing, and hypnotic .

“Sounds of the Wienfluss” starts with angular ensemble exchanges. Raskin’s agile alto saxophone forges a serpentine path within Schellander’s bowed phrases. Lehn contributes sound effects that underscore the dramatic ambiance. The mood is quite contemplative throughout, even though the group conversation ebbs and flows from fiery and riotous to quiet and somber. Raskin blows gentle, flittering notes, as Lehn peppers the music with clear, resonant chimes. Matija adds an organic quality to the interplay with dark, dense lines that delightfully contrast with Lehn’s otherworldly tones. Raskin’s alto alternates between urgent and acerbic melodies to solemn, crystalline refrains depending on the atmosphere his bandmates create.

A third of the way in, Schellander’s percussive bass ushers in an expectant undercurrent. Lehn responds with tense synth vamps. As Raskin returns with an elegant and passionate solo, the tune takes on an otherworldly quality with a touch of angst. Lehn brings subtle theatricality to the collective conversation, while Schellander contributes dark lyricism. Both perfectly complement Raskin’s forlorn saxophone lines. The result is wistful and introspective with a touch of mysticism. Slowly, as this stimulating and emotive three-way stream of consciousness comes to closure the trio members align their individual extemporizations with one another. Thus, the conclusion is haunting and provocative.

Live at Celeste is a brilliant and poetic recording. Raskin, Lehn, and Schellander demonstrate sublime synergy and share an innovative spirit. The result is a satisfying listening experience, one that stays memorable. even after the album itself has stopped playing.

Live At Celeste by Jon Raskin

The return of diatribes: Part II

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Nick Ostrum

diatribes, the long-standing house duo of Insub Records, had been on hiatus while percussionist Cyril Bondi and electronicist d’incise pursued other projects, sometimes together, sometimes apart. That hiatus has ended, at least for now. This year, 2026, has gifted us four realizations of a single score, L’apport (French for “the contribution”), each featuring the diatribes core in collaboration with a different musician (or in the sole case of Sound the alarm, a team of five) to round out a third rotating seat.

diatribes and Stefan Thut - L'apport : Lâ dèchigeâ (Insub, 2026)

Composer and cellist Stefan Thut has collaborated with d’incise and Bondi in the Insub.8tet (many of whose members appear on the 7tet release featured below), but, as far as I can tell, never just with the diatribes duo. Recorded in situ in the Wallis Mountains of Switzerland, this realization of L’apport comes across as a cross section of Thut’s minimalism (coupled with short references to Swiss folk songs), d’incise and Bondi’s forays into field-recorded environmental improvisation (see their Polytopies project), and all three’s long-standing fascination with long-tones. Bird chirps introduce Lâ dèchigeâ and abound throughout. With Bondi now on shruti box and d’incise on objects and laptop, the ambient bird, breeze, and other nature sounds provide the underlying soundtrack with which the trio interacts. Maybe by default of volume, Thut stands out the most with his intermittent legato drawls over the textures laid by the nature sounds and diatribes’s soft incidental contributions. A fine, divergent complement to the other performances released here and recommended especially to those drawn toward hyper-minimalism and musical interventions into nature sounds.

L'apport : Lâ dèchigeâ by DIATRIBES & STEFAN THUT .

Insub.7tet - L'apport : Sound the alarm (Insub, 2026)

L’apport: Sound the alarm is the outlier in this project, as it expands the diatribes +1 core to a full seven. In addition to d’incise and Bondi, the group is rounded out by two vocalists, Antoine Läng and Natalie Peters, violinist Anouck Genthon, and reedists Christophe Verthet and Esther Vaucher, respectively on soprano and tenor. Because of the size of the group, one might be tempted to assume Sound the alarm is the apex of the project. However, I am not sure that this realization is any more complete than the others. L’apport is that open.

This final installment unfolds as slowly as the others, but with more elements and a more frequent trade-off between them. Läng and Peters voices add a human dimension and, following the dedication, a sense of urgency as they intermingle with, supplant, and yield to the various instruments that calmly vie for space. The resulting sense of calm is disquieting rather than comforting. One gets the sense of drowning, or the dolorous moans of those present and past contending to be heard among a series of other soft ribbons of sound and muted alarm pulses about 13 minutes and the more forceful soundings starting 26 minutes in. Sound the alarm, indeed. Let us hope there are ears open enough to hear.

NB: All proceeds from purchases of L’apport: Lâ dèchigeâ will benefit the Ghasan Abu Sita children’s fund.

L'apport : Sound the alarm by INSUB.7TET .

Read part 1 here

The return of diatribes: Part I

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Nick Ostrum

diatribes, the long-standing house duo of Insub Records, had been on hiatus while percussionist Cyril Bondi and electronicist d’incise pursued other projects, sometimes together, sometimes apart. That hiatus has ended, at least for now. This year, 2026, has gifted us four realizations of a single score, L’apport (French for “the contribution”), each featuring the diatribes core in collaboration with a different musician (or in the lone case of Sound the alarm, a team of five) to round out a third rotating seat.

diatribes and Jean-Luc Guionnet - L'apport : An awkward position (insub, 2026)

Jean-Luc Guionnet is one of the most uncompromising saxophonists around. He plays maximalist, and he plays minimalist. He also produces electro-acoustic sound art, more in the latter vein than the former, which give him the ears and unique set of chops to deal with the current understated incarnation of diatribes. The title, L’apport: An awkward position, is likely meant with some irony. No member’s contribution is awkward, nor does any seem to throw the others for an unwieldy loop. This is slowly churning, meticulously constructed granular music. Gone are the beats of d’incise’s early days. This is abstract music conducted in real-time at the molecular level. Turn the headphones up and indulge in the beautifully rendered textures, punctuated periodically by a few choice honks, squawks, flutters, and clucks from a deeply attuned Guionnet. This is certainly among the the spikiest and most active of the L’apport series.

L'apport : An awkward position by DIATRIBES & JEAN-LUC GUIONNET

diatribes and Clara Levy - L'apport : Ke ya me transí (insub, 2026)

Ke ya me transí (Sesotho for I’m taking the train) features diatribes with violinist Clara Levy. It is a slow, cumulative affair. Unlike An awkward position, this realization is based on drones, including Bondi’s methodical exploration of a vibraphone. Images of the hum of bees on a sultry day, sunlight refracted through a wispy fog, its counterpart in the tentative excavation of a hazy memory flit by. Six minutes in, the drama thickens in a pulsing marcato run, and from there the piece departs on a heavier expanse of long tones over various rings, rattles, and other sounds. Out of this sonic brume, Levy periodically engages in passages of melodies that play both with medieval Sephardic scales (as the notes indicate) and remind me of Johnny Chang and other contemporary lowercase violinists, who blend quiet, amelodic structures with strained classical and folk motifs. Fifteen minutes in, the repeating notes mark a break, then a heavier atmosphere, again returning to a series of vying long tones. (This type of break repeats periodically throughout the single track.) A wonderful and deeply introspective album, and a consummate example of what the chamber music tradition still has offer when cambered through the right lens.

L'apport : Ke ya me transí by DIATRIBES & CLARA LEVY

diatribes and Lise Barkas - L'Apport : Apprendre la manière (Insub, 2026)

The third installment in the series invites Lise Barkas’s bagpipes and hurdy gurdy to the crew. The result is a unique blend of the contemporary – long tones, false starts and stops, the elevation of the experiment over some consummative realization, electronics – early bardic traditions – Barkas’ contributions and the interaction between a single measure leitmotif and a thudding bass drum. In its circular ritualism, this resembles d’incise and Bondi’s recent work in their La Tène trio. For her part, Barkas helps pull the music from the dance hall inclinations of that project to sprightlier, if also halting, terrain. The irregular beats are more conducive to prancing around a dance-fire than bobbing around some warped chthonic club. The edges are frayed. The contours are ruffled and twisted. The abrupt stops can be distracting at times in the first realization, but are often deployed to great effect, especially in the glitchier passages and the more robust second one.

L'Apport : Apprendre la manière by DIATRIBES & LISE BARKAS

Reza Askari Roar Quintet - Maining Suite part 3

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Recorded at the Kammermusiksaal Deutschlandfunk in Cologne, the piece from bassist and composer Reza Askari features Lina Allemano (trumpet), Stefan Karl Schmid (tenor sax), Christopher Dell (vibraphone), Fabian Arends (drums) and Askari. According to the composer, the composition forms the third part of his Maining Suite and is dedicated to pianist and composer Felix Hauptmann. It revisits and reshapes several motives from Maining Part Two—first documented on the 2022 album Roar feat. Christopher Dell—while introducing a new motive that will evolve further in future installments of the suite.

Also, seenEyal Hareuveni's review of xAYb v8v dYAx (Boomslang, 2026).

Ed Hazell - ENERGY CENTER, A history of Studio Rivbea (NoBusiness Records, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Ferruccio Martinotti

Paris in the 1920s, with Picasso, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Gide and Gertrude Stein sitting at the Shakespeare & Co.; the Bauhaus with Oskar Schlemmer's theater and the themed parties; the boppers at Minton's Playhouse on 118th Street; the CBGB's in 1976. In a word: The Scene. Is anyone indifferent to its call? Certainly not us. In many cases, it arises from the suggestions of historians, journalists, and/or enthusiasts who shape it “ex post”, but who cares? Thinking of a group of people, in a specific historical and social context, sharing a common cultural sentiment, simply generates unparalleled fascination. Just a few years before the explosion of the punk supernova of the Ramones, Television, and Patti Smith, around the same geographic perimeter (Village, Lower East Side, Soho), seismographs recorded a new artistic ferment. Inspired by the AACM in Chicago and the Black Artists Group in St. Louis, a group of musicians, writers, and actors repurposed abandoned spaces such as lofts, warehouses and industrial buildings into creative hubs in which to live, play, record, teach, discuss: Loft Jazz was born. Wise Old Man Wadada Leo Smith summarized it this way: “There's the mainstream, and you're not part of it, so you have to build your own reality. And that reality is not a protest against, but something for ourselves.”

There are two main hotspots: the hottest is Studio Rivbea at 24 Bond St., where Sam Rivers lives with his wife, Bea; then Ali's Alley at 77 Greene St., Rashid Ali's home, club, recording studio, and headquarters of his Survival Records. Contributing to the cause are James DuBois and Juma Sultan with Studio We; Warren Smith with Studio WIS; David Murray and Stanley Crouch with Studio Infinity; the theater/music space La MaMa and The Soundscape. Without predefined aesthetics or boundaries of any kind, the rules of engagement are crystal clear: Community and Freedom. This extraordinary bonfire of creativity spanned almost the entire 1970s, extinguishing in 1979. For those who didn't experience it firsthand, the reference bible has always been the five Wildflowers albums recorded at Rivbea in 10 days in May 1976, featuring all the key players. The records have become difficult to find, even in the 3-CD version, but don't despair, because in Lithuania, NoBusiness Records' mission is to soothe our regrets and to grant our wishes. And they do so with Loft Jazz as well. First and foremost, with the 2009 box set "Muntu Recordings," celebrating saxophonist Jemeel Moondoc, then with the “Rivbea Live” series by Oliver Lake, Jimmy Lyons, Arthur Blythe, and Maurice McIntyre, recorded at Rivbea, which take us back to Downtown, allowing us to relive the magic of that extraordinary season. Four unmissable albums, period.

From a chronicles perspective, to date, the only one who has dealt with that scene is Michael Heller with “Loft Jazz: Improvising New York in the 1970s.” As an ethnomusician, Heller focuses his analysis on the economic, social, and urban aspects of early 1970s New York, crucial to generating the breeding ground without which the scene would never have taken shape. We said “to date”, because NoBusiness Records draw a line, putting an end to the topic, now and ever. It does so with Ed Hazell, a Boston musicologist and curator of Sam Rivers' musical legacy, who, with "Energy Center," provides us with the ultimate book on the Loft movement and its epicenter, Studio Rivbea.

The work is divided into two parts that represent the axes along which the author's exegesis moves. The first 100 pages lead us to the Loft through the personal and musical journey of Sam Rivers and his wife Beatrice, whose centrality to the story comes finally to light in all its entirety. If you think you already know everything about the subject, our humble advice is to not skip a single line; we're sure you’ll find something worth reading. The next 200 pages are the book's cornerstone and hallmark: the sessionography. A mind-blowing session history, detailed by date and musicians, will satisfy even the most compulsive completist, providing the reader with vivid evidence of what an incredible musical powerhouse Rivbea was. The list of recordings released at the Studio completes such a philological, gigantic labor of love. A word more about the iconographic content. The photographs, many previously unpublished, are astonishing and, in their timeless, b&w beauty, confirm, once more, how much jazz owes to photography and vice versa. Still not enough? Then take a look at the reproductions of dozens and dozens of ads, brochures, and flyers related to Rivbea's activities: a golden cornucopia that will bring tears to your eyes. Could you ask for more from a book? Honestly, NO. File under: Holy Grail.

Order from NoBusiness' website.

or here...

Book by Ed Hazell - ENERGY CENTER - A HISTORY OF STUDIO RIVBEA - Digital (pdf file + samples of music played at Rivbea) / Hard Cover Book - 321 pages by Sam Rivers

Masayo Koketsu & Nava Dunkelman - Veins of Rain (Relative Pitch, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Richard Blute

““Ain’t nobody coming?” [Ali] said to Coltrane.

“No, it’s just you and me.”

“What are we playing? Is it fast? Is it slow?”

“Whatever you want it to be. Come on. I’m going to ring some bells.””

-Quoted by Ben Ratliff in Coltrane: The Story of a Sound.

John Coltrane’s sax-drums duo album with Rashied Ali, Interstellar Space, stands as a singular achievement in the history of free jazz. The duo’s restlessness, their commitment to musical exploration and the profound communication taking place between them would create a template that has animated the practice of free jazz to this day.

Stef Gijssels, in his 2007 post on this website, wrote the following about that combination of instruments:

“[It] offers a total freedom of interaction, but it's like poetry without rhyme, there is no comfort zone to fall back into, no safe haven, no safety net, it's swim or drown.”

I think any jazz musicians wanting to tackle the drums/sax duo format must be very brave indeed, knowing that a comparison to Interstellar Space is almost inevitable. But they would also realize the freedom of unfettered expression that comes with it. And great musicians would view that as an opportunity to create something new, to engage in a genuinely novel musical conversation. Best of all, we get to eavesdrop on that conversation.

I’ll always click on a drum/sax duo when I come across one on bandcamp. But I was especially happy to see this particular combo as I was familiar with both musicians and had very much appreciated earlier work of theirs. Both were in a trio album with Tim Berne, Poiēsis, one of the best albums of 2025. Drummer, percussionist Nava Dunkelman was also in a tremendous duo with violinist gabby fluke-mogul, titled Likht.Saxophonist Masayo Koketsu has a solo album, entirely on alto, called Ballade in which she plays jazz standards. She even covers Lover Man. (Seriously, I discovered this album in the course of writing this review and it’s exceptional. Do check it out.)

The first track here, 初雷–hatsurai, begins with a thunderburst from Koketsu. Dunkelman matches her intensity. Google Translate tells me the title means First Thunder. Yup. I’ve listened to this album a bunch of times now and it still snaps my head back. These musicians are serious and they want your attention. Both musicians genuinely bring thunder on this track.

There’s so much good music on this album, and what’s most impressive is the great variety of ideas to be found. The third track, 露の玉–tsuyu no tama, meaning Dewdrop Ball, is beautiful. Koketsu begins with lightning quick shards of notes with Dunkelman responding with bells. A reference to Interstellar Space? Then there’s a brief bit of Ayler and then the musicians are off to explore more new ideas.

The final and longest track 夕霧–yūgiri, meaning Evening Mist, is the best. It begins with plaintive playing from the saxophone with very light percussion. Then Koketsu’s playing gains in intensity and her lines become more complex. Dunkelman happily matches her and then takes over. Now she’s bringing the thunder and Koketsu again responds. Here, and throughout the album, these two musicians seem so in tune it’s a delight to listen to.

Possibly the most surprising thing about this album is the first sentence of the liner notes:

“Masayo Koketsu and Nava Dunkelman met for the first time in this studio session.”

Veins of Rain by Masayo Koketsu, Nava Dunkelman

John Coltrane 100: Expression - A Summary of the Final Stage

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Klaus Kitzinger

As I already had the privilege to write a feature about the posthumously released album Stellar Regions on this blog, i want to stretch this even a bit further. Here, I take a look at the period to follow, which eventually and fatally turned out to be the last five months in John Coltrane’s life. My focus is on the production of music in this final stage, as far it has been recorded and released, rather than John’s personal or health condition.

On 15 February 1967, John had recorded the tracks eventually released as Stellar Regions in 1995 (see my earlier feature) with the quartet.

One week later, on 22 February 1967, he returned with Rashied Ali for a saxophone – drums duo session, eventually to be released as Interstellar Space (see Gary Chapin‘s feature on this album).

On 07 March 1967, in another session with the quartet again, he recorded two tracks, as far as we know, Ogunde and Number One.

Ogunde is, first of all, a relatively short piece at a few seconds over 3 ½ minutes. A noticeable parallel to Stellar Regions, where the title track and Iris have approximately the same length and concise structure. The track takes its title presumably from an afro-brazilean folk song „Ogundu Varere“, rougly translated as a prayer to the gods. John occupied himself with spiritual traditions especially from Africa. John uses his forceful, cry-like late saxophone sound, overblowing his instrument, which gives an emotional urgence to the piece. The theme starts with a solemn, hmyn-like melody, but breaks out in free, atonal outbursts, before it fades away. In summary, John condenses the intensity of his (at that time) usually half-hour long live improvisations into less than a handful of minutes (but see below, what happened live).

At some time in spring (David S. Wild confirmed in the liner notes for Stellar Regions that this track was not recorded on 15 February, so the actual recording date remains unknown), John must have recorded To Be, where he plays flute and is rejoined by Pharoah Sanders on piccolo flute. He shows a very calm, introspective and meditative side here. At over 16 minutes playing time, this track feels like a spiritual retreat. The two flutes give it an airy, almost floating mood. Alice Coltrane’s flowing piano style provides a mystic, harp-like cushion. Rashied Ali on drums and Jimmy Garrison on bass keep it calm and subdued. All together, the piece lacks a trditional jazz pulse, even leaves traditional jazz structures completely and makes a profound structural switch towards a meditative, open-end spiritual incantation. It stands as one of the most explicit artifacts of the creative partnership between John and Alice at that final stage and already mirrors the „cosmic jazz“ landscapes that Alice would pioneer on her own in the years to follow in her landmark solo releases (Universal Consciousness, Journey in Satchidananda). Not to forget about Pharoah Sanders (Karma).

Also unknown is the exact recording date for the piece titled Expression in spring 1967 with the quartet, which later lended its title to the album.

23 April 1967 is the date of the last live recording, The Olatunji Concert. This performance, originally recorded for a radio broadcast, is featured by Fotis Nikolakopoulos on this blog, so see there. With due respect to Fotis, I will limit myself here to the absolutely striking contrast between the live version of Ogunde and the studio version. Performed live, it swells to 28 minutes playing time. The studio recording’s tight and condensed structure is only preserved in the theme at the beginning to which it returns only at the very end. In between, it gets overwhelmed by a storm-like wave of pure energy. After the introduction of the melody as theme, the structure collapses completely in a ritual storm. A dense, polyrhythmic vortex is unchained in Rashied Ali’s drumming. Alice Coltrane plays cascade-like runs on the piano. On saxophone, Pharoah Sanders adds his bone-rattling, ecstatic overblowing cries. Yes, the quartet has been expanded here. Pharoah Sanders is back at it on the second saxophone. Two additional percussionists joined in, Algie DeWitt and Jumma Santos.

The last ever live gig came at Baltimore’s Famous Ballroom on May 7, 1967. No audio recording of that performance is known to exist.

On 17 May 1967, exactly two months before John’s death, a sextet met for a last studio recording. The master tapes have been lost or at least unissued so two tracks with the titles None Other and Kaleidoscope have been unreleased so far and do not even appear on retrospective compilations.

With the recorded material, a last studio record was conceived during John’s lifetime. It was given the title Expression. John was actively involved in the production and met with Bob Thiele.

On side 1, it had Ogunde as the opening track (the studio version, as above, of course). Track #2 was To Be with John and Pharoah Sanders on flutes (as above). At over 16 minutes, it was the longest track, making up for nearly half of the original album’s playing time, and the only track on the album in which Pharoah Sanders made an appearance.

Side 2 opened with the majestic ballad Offering, the only track chosen from the 15 February session, thus making it the only track on the posthumous album Stellar Regions (see there) that had been released before and had an original title. Hank Shteamer has just featured this track prominently in the New York Times and put it into the larger context of spiritual jazz, for which a piece like Offering „would seem like a perfect prototype“ (Hank Shteamer, Spiritual Jazz Has Turned Cozy. John Coltrane Demanded More. New York Times, September 18, 2026). The original album closed with the title track Expression,John‘s last studio recording to ever be released. In the later CD release only, Number O ne, recorded on the same day as Ogunde, was added as a bonus track (the track, however, had been released for the first time in a 1978 compilation album).

Obviously, the most recent recording session of May 1967 was not considered in the process at all (at that time, the tapes at least should still have been around, I guess?).

John reportedly selected the four tracks for the original album release and their exact sequence himself. On Friday, 14 July 1967, three days before his death, he met Bob Thiele, handed the master tapes over to him and finally authorised the title and the release of the album, but expressed his opposition against liner notes.

Expression, as John Coltrane’s final statement, was released in September 1967, two months after his death, containing John‘s chronologically last audible studio recordings and being the first posthumous release of his music.

John Coltrane 100: Interstellar Space

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Gary Chapin

Reading back into the reviews of this recording, from over the past decades, you encounter the word “relentless” a lot, probably more than for any other album in the history of albums. It’s interesting because, when I first heard Interstellar Space, “relentless” was the word that occurred to me — right after the introductory bells of track one faded. Till then, I hadn’t realized that “relentless” was a thing that music could be, and that relentlessness was awesome. Even transcendent.

It’s not a complicated record. You’ve got your tenor and drums. Each piece starts with a theme, enters the improvisation, and then winds down and restates the theme. Each improvisation travels a similar arc, beginning in a saner space, rising intensity and ecstasy, whipping us into a frenzy, then easing off into … well, not serenity, but you get close to it as you hear the shaken bells that begin the next piece.

The joys of Interstellar Space come not from structural intrigue, but from the cascadingly brilliant improvs. Coltrane and Ali were both ridiculously ON that day. (Ali actually felt he had underperformed because he didn’t know they were doing a duet session until he arrived at the session.) And the duet setting makes the music almost transparent. Aside from the beauty of Trane and Ali’s playing, you also get a sense of exactly what Coltrane was trying for. His insistent explorations (relentless) are laid bare. This is an excellent entry to Coltrane’s later works. His playing is like water moving through the ground, trying to find its way through a shelf of granite. Eventually, the water finds the crevices, freezes, expands, thaws, and breaks the stone to pieces. The water always wins. A force of nature.

John Coltrane 100: The Olatunji Concert: The Last Live Recording

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

Truth must be said from the beginning, I’m not, even a little, objective when it comes to John Coltrane’s last chapter in life and in music. Those two are inseparable in any case. Second truth is that this last period that starts roughly sometime in 1964, prior to A Love Supreme, and ends with his death is my favorite music. He and all his comrades, especially Alice, Pharoah, Rashied and Jimmy managed to create a body of music of transcendence –an ascension for the soul and deep meditation for the mind.

My album of choice is this last live recording (where the aforementioned musicians are joined by Juma Santos and Algie DeWitt on percussion), recorded just three months before his death at the Olatunji Center of African Culture in Harlem, N.Y.C. In a quite symbolic move (the place: deep in an African-American neighborhood, the name: African Culture and tradition as a starting point) the music of the players, even though both geographically and in name still black, still jazz but free, is already a new entity.

With this recording, one that the sound is not so hi-fi, Coltrane’s sound seems to be in the final stage of the total freedom that Ascension initiated. Listening to the unrelenting growls, howls and their thick wall of sound created by Trane and Pharoah, one could easily comment that the two tracks, Ogunde of almost half an hour and the total reconstruction of My Favorite Things that clocks in thirty four uncontrollably joyous minutes, are pure noise.

This ferocious a la Ayler attack by the two locked in reeds brothers, provides a rough field, like a magic carpet flying in the air, for the others to give everything they have. And they have to give a lot to the not so big crowd attending, as their collective struggle to follow or lead at some points, or intertwine with small gestures like the polyrhythmic-not-so-rhythmic barrages by Rashied, the lovingly plucked piano chords by Alice and the even though not always audible, monstrous strength by Jimmy on double bass.

Allow me to humbly comment that Coltrane’s music channeled everything in black tradition and went beyond that. He created his own tradition. You also don’t need me to say that this is an amazing recording. One that encapsulates all the stated goals by John Coltrane himself. Total freedom, love, myriads of feelings and a spiritual unity that could be the final Truth.

If there’s something to think about, to question, it could be this: where could his music go after this? Did he, before even turning 41, reached a point of no return?

@fot.isn

John Coltrane 100: Concert in Japan

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Martin Schray

The reason I like John Coltrane’s Concert in Japan best out of all my Coltrane albums is that it includes one of my all-time favorite tracks: “Peace on Earth”. And as good as “Meditation/Leo (Part One),” “Leo (Part Two),” and “Part Three” are - “Peace on Earth” outshines them all.

When John Coltrane arrived in Japan in 1966, he was welcomed like a king. He arrived at Haneda Airport on July 8, 1966, along with his wife Alice, Pharoah Sanders, Jimmy Garrison, and Rashied Ali. Ali, who later recalled the trip, said they were greeted by thousands of Japanese fans. At the airport, there were huge, life-size cardboard cutouts of the musicians, a red carpet leading from the plane to the terminal, and bouquets of flowers.

And Coltrane had a message, it was no coincidence that he wanted to perform in Japan. He insisted on traveling to Nagasaki to visit the Peace Memorial at the site of the atomic bombing. He laid down a wreath and prayed for a long time. The place had a profound emotional and spiritual impact on him. On the evening of his concert in Nagasaki, he played “Peace on Earth” - at that time a new piece and a kind of musical prayer for peace. At a press conference during the tour, when asked about the Vietnam War, he said: “I dislike war, period. It should stop, and any other war.”

On Concert in Japan - and on “Peace on Earth” in particular - one can see how Coltrane’s thirst for new sounds is inextricably linked to his desire to view the universe from a spiritual perspective; his music radiates a cosmic aura. The piece begins with an incredibly beautiful melody that floats above Alice’s arpeggios, Garrison’s bass sprinklings, and Ali’s sparse drumming. It seems like the musical embodiment of the Garden of Eden. Nearly six minutes of pure harmony - but then deliberate atonality creeps in, paradise is threatened, only heavenly saxophone lines save it for the time being. Then, however, a dissonant storm is conjured up, shaking this world to its very foundations. The piece is thrown into utter disarray; block chords replace the arpeggios, and the bass and drums throw the meter overboard. At the very end, however, harmony returns, and the melodies resurface, albeit different from how they began.

In July 1966, John Coltrane was just one year away from his untimely death, yet his zest for life was greater than ever. His musical explorations were more adventurous than before, and “Peace on Earth” brilliantly captures the essence of what his music is all about. Or, as my friend Thomas Weber puts it: “On the one hand, it’s utter extravagance and exhaustion, on the other, it’s the dissolution of boundaries. Free jazz with melodies.”

John Coltrane 100: Ascension

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Gregg Miller

To celebrate and commemorate John Coltrane’s 100 ^th birthday, drummer extraordinaire Don Berman will reprise at the Chapel Performance Space in Seattle his original composition, 'Ascension Northwest', written in the spirit of Coltrane’s Ascension (Impulse!, 1966). As in the original, Berman has11 musicians playing a series of mantras interspersed with spirited soloing over improvised support from subsets of other players, including a double-bass duet.

A preview of this year’s performance written by Paul Rauch appears in Seattle’s Earshot Jazz magazine: https://online.fliphtml5.com/risyt/Earshot_Jazz_09_2026/#p=13

You can hear earlier versions of 'Ascension Northwest' released here: https://threshold24.bandcamp.com/album/ascension‑northwest

As a contribution for the FJB Coltrane birthday column, I’ve asked the 11 musicians performing 'Ascension Northwest' (myself included) to reflect on Coltrane’s Ascension and its impact on their musical journey. Below, our answers (gingerly edited). The questionnaire is reproduced at the very end.

Tom Varner (French horn)

1. I knew about Coltrane and loved his music from his time with Miles, and also his ‘classic’ quartet recordings, when I was in high school and getting into jazz. I did not know about Ascensionuntil a bit later, perhaps early in college. Even though I loved Ornette Coleman, and even Albert Ayler, I must say that very late Coltrane and Ascension was a bit :”Whoa! This is too heavy for me!” at first listen. I think I wanted to hear the ‘melodic line’ no matter how ‘out’ it was, and this music went beyond that. Eventually I grew to love it, letting go of the ‘I must hear a clear line’ worry and just enjoying being carried away in the power of the SOUND. I.e., that sound of a ‘scary but then NOT scary’ glorious totality of several improvisers all going full steam ahead at once. The JCOA Michael Mantler ‘Communications’ 3-LP set, from 1968, with Pharoah Sanders and other greats, was a kind of bridge for me to the world of Ascension. To a kind of ‘beautiful crying battle’ as opposed to just noise. Within one or two years, I was open to playing in those settings!

1a. Ascension opened up a new world of “multiple new sound-creating improvisers” creating new avenues that were not ‘just’ chord change or single-line orientated. From then on, Coltrane’s world and the worlds of, say, Xenakis and Ligeti, were not so far apart!

1b.Moving into the ‘90s, I worked with ensembles that had 6, 7, 8 winds with bass and drums. I was going for that high energy sound where it was ‘ok’ to not hear individual single lines and just get swept away in the sound. The best example of this is my own “Death at the Right Time,” on “The Mystery of Compassion” on Soul Note (1992). 5 saxes, three low brass, bass and drums.

1c. Ascension kind of gave us ‘permission’ to create beautiful and powerful structures with very little or no written music, just ideas, and trusting that the improvisers will create a lasting artwork on the spot. I love that!

2. This is very corny, but at age 18, I clearly remember thinking “Well, remember, Tom, if things get bad in the future, or very challenging, don’t forget to listen to Coltrane—that music is healing. That music will always be there.” And, I would also simply say, “thank you, Mr. Coltrane.”

Jim Knodle (trumpet)

I heard Ascension when it was released in 1966. I regard it as a companion to Ornette's double quartet project Free Jazz. The interaction between Scott LaFaro and Jimmy Garrison is really something! Perry Robinson told me that the whole thing started at the Federal Prison in Lexington where everyone practiced in the same room at the same time. They didn’t want them to rehearse, so they just played ad hoc .

Kenny Mandell (alto sax)

1. I was probably 19 when I first heard Ascension. 1972 or so. Being in college, I had heard free jazz players in NYC, and I knew Sun Ra’s music. Ascension was way more organized than a lot of Sun Ra’s music insofar as it kept the traditional jazz form where there was thematic material followed by solos. There are motifs but there aren’t any chord changes to speak of, and there is some degree of cacophony. Depending on the player, some of the solos were more traditional, others were, I would say, divinely inspired, like Eric Dolphy’s.

In my listening life at that time, I quickly went from Led Zeppelin to the Art Ensemble, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, and Cecil Taylor. Most people thought I was crazy. I related to the energy of it. The dissonance never bothered me per se. Ascension showed me that the big band format could be stretched. The rock stuff was relatively static in comparison. Hendrix was close. Everybody else stayed in the form. I see Ascensionas important but not seminal. It’s certainly part of the canon.

1b. I’ve put many large groups together over the years. Part of the game plan for large group improvisation is to establish a level of trust. I’ve learned to pick people who are comfortable recognizing that the traditional limits or strictures put on playing are actually optional, and one can use or not use those depending on what sort of statement the whole piece wants to make. Murray Bookchin’s Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971, 1986) was pivotal (early 1970s) for me as much as any of this music. I tried to use those principles in music and in organizing. My book some day will be called The Tyranny of Harmony. Piano chords in particular limit your choices as an improvisor.

It’s also the case that as I’ve gotten older and found that the audience just hasn’t been there for totally unstructured, large-form music, I’ve tended to select pieces or write pieces that give the audience some sort of repeated motif to ground their listening experience.

1c. Ascension opened the door. After A Love Supreme (1965), people thought Coltrane took an extreme left turn into the world of sound exploration as it could be manifested in improvisation and group interaction. Ascension put into stark reality the challenges of making and of listening to that kind of music. I don’t think they got to the level that the Art Ensemble of Chicago did over the years, and some of Cecil’s groups that stayed together for years: Jimmy Lyons, Sirone, Andrew Cyrille, they practiced incessantly and got telepathic.

2. John Coltrane had an obsession with achieving a certain sound. Coltrane—his essence for me–is that ceaseless searching. This is what I love about music probably the most, it’s that it never ends.

Dick Valentine (tenor sax)

I reflected at length on the questions you posed, and on the evolution of my attitudes, responses and relations with Coltrane’s music, which I understand in a context of almost 60 years trying to educate myself and participate in contemporary expressions of Great Black Music. In the end, despite that his recorded output made a tremendous impact on my playing ‑‑ and was a singular factor in motivating my drive to make music ‑‑ I think it fair to say Ascension, the recording, has not occupied as big a space in my development or conceptualization as some other works.

I played in Don Berman's three presentations of Ascension Northwest in 2016, and I'm very pleased indeed to get to do it again on the Coltrane centenary. I really cherish the privilege of participating with artists the caliber of those whom Don has persuaded. I look around the room at the assemblage of musical knowledge, emotional depth, technical proficiency, and aesthetic ambition, I am inspired and amazed and humbled.

I’m long past accepting that I will never "understand" society. It seems to me the “order that governs power and human relations” in our real world is founded on out‑of‑date assumptions regarding what humanity needs to flourish. I know that there are many people aware of this damaging misalignment, and I can tell they mostly share my frustration that fixing large‑scale misalignments is not in the offing, thanks precisely to the systems that govern the distribution of power and dictate humans' relationship with real resources.

So, on John Coltrane's centenary, we'll gather musicians, players and audience in celebration. In a sense, a roomful is perhaps a model of “society.” Everyone in the room will have some mental image of what constitutes a successful event ‑‑ in context, the definition of the community “flourishing,” right? As players, we have the responsibility to provide physical, audible inputs to the outcome. There is a bit of magic to what may happen here. Each player contributes to the global fabric, whose nature he may not predict. It’s understood that coordinated inputs are in some sense a prerequisite for success, and communication is required for coordination. How is communication achieved? By the act that constitutes that player’s input. It’s a bit recursive, to say the least!

Neil Welch (tenor sax)

1. Ascension came my way when I was 15 or 16. I picked up the album in cd format at a record store. This was my first experience with Trane’s music on Impulse!. I picked up the album out of curiosity. I was initially struck by three things:

1. The album cover ‑‑ Coltrane the seeker, looking beyond himself, and beyond us to something cosmic.

2. The length of the album: Until this point, I didn't know that a ‘jazz’ album could be +/‑ 40 minutes in length.

3. The cd version had takes 1 and 2, which made it a double album. It was the most expensive CD I had ever bought.

The response for me was immediate. I felt the album opened with a declarative question. Coltrane begins with a theme, but it is incomplete. The tonic is ‘missing’ from the first note he plays. He asks the band a question with only the partial theme, and leaves it to the band to complete that theme.

Ascension felt to me a major and inevitable document in Coltrane’s music from this period. The emotional intensity of his solos, and what he was asking of a small group, had reached a tipping point. I found it deeply humbling and revealing that he used the vehicle of a communal sound to further amplify the concept of the jazz musician as soloist and group collaborator.

1a. After Ascension, I understood that in musical conversation, a powerful theme could be stated with brevity. A short theme can grant space for a complex response of virtually any length.

1b. Ascension helped me to experience song length as a durational mind-set. A song could, and ought to be, exactly the length needed to fulfill its musical and emotional aims.

1c.Ascension is, for me, an album of colliding forces and the unity of embracing those forces towards a common mission. It’s like people in a building. All these souls one floor atop the other. Different lives, worldviews, needs, hurts, wants, but all share the same vertical massing. If that building is on fire, they are invested in each other's outcome. They’ve looked in the eyes of those people in the elevator.

2. Can we as a society still sit with, and grapple with in real time, discordance in art‑making? Can intensity of sound and emotion hold space for us in our lives and aid us in the journey of deeper personal growth?

Steve Meyer (alto sax)

1. I must have been 14 or 15. I was just getting into Coltrane and came across Ascension at my local record store. At that point I’d only known some of his earlier quartet work and work with Miles. Seeing that this was a larger group piqued my interest. And I recognized the names of a lot of heavy players, though I doubt I’d heard most of them at that point, so thought it would be a good album. After getting back home, I’m in my bedroom and put on the album. I don’t know what I was expecting but not too far into the first side (the first ensemble part) I knew it wasn’t for me. I didn’t know what to make of it, and it didn’t speak to me. I think I finished the first side but didn’t listen to the second. A few years went by before I was ready to give it another try. I was still an adventurous listener, so my first reaction didn’t turn me off from listening to other “out”/free musics which I grew to appreciate and enjoy more and more.

1a. If I don’t like what I hear on first listen, I remind myself that there are works of art out there that I’m not ready for. Music will speak to us when we’re ready to hear it.

1b. While I was listening to more out music in my teens it was years later before I played free music – at least with others. In high school this wasn’t the kind of music most of my musician friends would be into. Even with the one or two who weren’t opposed to it, we never thought to attempt it ourselves, at least not in any serious way, sticking to more standard jazz and the fusion music of the day. (This is early 80s, btw.) Even later, people I played with tended to be more conventional in the foundation of their music. These days I’m fortunate to have a community of musicians who embrace free/creative music. And, I have more confidence in myself to nudge the conversation that way when playing with others that I think will be receptive to it.

1c. I tend to not view music through a sociological lens, but Ascension and similar music has made me consider the normative orders of music in the US. Mainly, they’ve shown me there are a lot of stories to be told and a lot of different ways to tell them.

2. I want to thank Coltrane for his music and inspiration. The question to ask myself: how can I harness the focus and questing spirit of Trane?

Eric Ring (piano)

While A Love Supreme was life changing at 18, I’d surprisingly never heard Ascension prior to preparing for this performance.

Don Berman (composer, drums )

1. A sax player at my summer Maine resort job, a student of Jackie McLean, had introduced me to Coltrane’s Live at Birdland (Impulse!, 1964). This was 1972. I heard an amazing spiritual element in John Coltrane's music when I heard his quartet play “Alabama.” It struck me incredibly deeply and I have adored jazz and playing jazz ever since. (The piece was a deeply moving eulogy to the victims of bombing of the 16th street Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama.) A couple of years later, in my junior year of college, I heard Ascension and realized that Trane had helped jazz expand its scope enormously to express a wider range of feelings. With the Ascension session, jazz composition and form had evolved light years from the beginnings of jazz decades earlier. After Ascension, there was now a huge universe of possibilities for jazz musicians to explore in their work.

1a.As I got further into jazz I particularly loved Miles Davis and John Coltrane, because I saw how each had evolved continuously throughout their musical journeys, from one period and chapter and style to another. The way I think about music and music making after Ascension is part and parcel of how I feel about music and art in general. All of the art forms have a rich and magical history. If you have studied and played music for years and years, you have to discover who you are and what your aesthetic is.

1b. For me, Ascension is part of what guided me further into freer playing and improvising in the last 20 years. Creating my own compositions has become more important for me. I organize pieces that contain both written and improvised sections. For this I select musicians that can both interpret written compositions and also improvise very well.

2. I would ask others: How does Coltrane’s music move you and make you feel about what feelings or sounds you play and express when you play? The world is full of a truly amazing variety of music. There are masters playing in each of those styles. I would ask others who take music seriously to open their minds and make sure they hear the music of master creators, live when possible, and in as many styles as possible. Master the basic fundamentals, and take music as seriously as Trane did.

For those just seeking fun, that is fine too. A lot of striving people in the arts take things too seriously, especially when they become too self-absorbed and their egos interfere with what they are attempting to do as musicians. As the great pianist and educator Kenny Werner teaches his students and readers, “your value as a human being is not based upon how well you play a musical instrument.”

Gregg Miller (baritone sax)

1. Around 1997 I bought a used CD copy of the compilation, The Major Works of John Coltrane (GRP Records, 1992) which included both takes of Ascension as well as Om, Kulu Se Mama, and Selflessness. I was stunned at the difference in intent between those recordings and Giant Steps. In Giant Steps, I heard a restless cramming of as many notes as quickly as possible within structures that could barely contain them. In Ascension, Coltrane had left that set of problems behind in favor of a compositional form that foregrounded the free-playing (and listening, or not listening) of every other player, a dense maelstrom that produced its own power without regard to or in opposition to or transcending of the traditional tropes of organized sound. To my ears, there was still an evident structuredness to the resultant noise, but full-on interplay was now the method and the lesson. It felt to me like a releasing of mutual respect, a lifting of repression inherent in most musics, and a deliberate shifting of power dynamics from a singular ordered mind that commands obedience (and players willingly, often reverently submitting to that control) to the shared embrace of others who jointly participate. Messy, but beautiful. I was studying a lot of Habermas at the time, and so for me, the link between music-making and communicative action was an easy one to see/hear and understand. I wasn’t playing free music (or any music) at the time, but the seed had been sown without me knowing it.

1a. In the late 1990s I would listen to Ascension and the other tracks on Major Works over and again while studying. It was the kind of music that permitted my mind to roam freely and/or easily concentrate elsewhere without demanding I enter its rhythms, melodies, cadence. There was something liberating in its power to shape time and experience like that. Among other things, it forced me to confront the limitations of pop music and its draw.

1b. As wild as Ascensions ometimes feels, it predicates without having arrived at a music that depends foremost on collective improvisation where listening and meaningful response have overtaken chops and strutting (not that chops and strutting can’t be part of meaningful communication). What opens up, then, is the possibility for music-making where the reception of one’s own and others’ sound while playing is governed by a feeling out of the pulse of the whole, accepting contingency and accident as integral to the flow of making. Musical “intention” in this context becomes an emergent property of the experience of intersubjectivity.

1c. Most (90%?) deliberately made music appears to our ears in strict time, where the musicians aim to become part of a single organism beating in time, and their music tries to compel listeners to imaginatively join that rhythmic organism. There is solace and belonging offered in that vision of unity and unfreedom. I’ve had enough of that music. How else might we imagine and experience collective practices of meaning-making/moving/sounding as individual and collective flourishing/belonging/being-with-others? Ascension.

Questionnaire

1. When did you first hear Ascension, or come to know about it? What was your response? How did this event affect your understanding of Coltrane and what he’s up to, of jazz music, and/or music and what it’s up to?

1a. How do you think about music and music‑making after Ascension?

1b. Has Ascension (or its ilk) informed your practice – of playing, of organizing, of selecting musicians, of conceptualizing the field of music?

1c. Has Ascension informed your understanding of society, or, dare I say it, the normative order(s) that govern(s) our understanding of power and human relations?

2. What question would you want to ask of yourself, of others, about John Coltrane @100?

John Coltrane 100: Stellar Regions

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Klaus Kitzinger

Reflections on Stellar Regions (1967/1995)

Around the end of the year 1995, a „new“ album of John Coltrane, posthumous of course, was announced to be released. Alice Coltrane(AC), generally referred to in the press as Coltrane‘s widow and archive keeper, had found a previously lost tape of a 1967 recording date (and given titles to the tracks), we learned.

As a relative newbie to modern, avant-garde jazz, you would generally resort to sources like „Das Jazzbuch“ by acclaimed writer J.-E. Berendt from your local public library (in Lower Bavaria, in my case). As to Coltrane’s music, you would probably have already taken Soultrane and Blue Train as a starting point, passed by Giant Steps und initiated yourself into the Impulse-/classic quartet period with, for instance, Live at the Village Vanguard . You would have learned that A Love Supreme was the peak of his creative work and a great milestone of modern jazz in general. Going on further to Ascension, probably tempted by Mr Behrendt‘s description of it „as an orgasm lasting 40 minutes“, it was, however, not for me. It was simply too much for me to take at that time, especially the lack of any „song structure“, I did not find an orgasm, but a collective, cacophonic mess lasting 40 minutes, to be honest.

With that background, learning that the announced release, titled Stellar Regions , was originally recorded in 1967, it caught my curiosity nonetheless. Not only was this my birth year, it would also be interesting to see: how had Coltrane developed from 1965 on? And, sadly, we could expect to listen to some of his last recorded music, just five months before his death,

Some raw facts: All the music assembled on Stellar Regions was recorded in the Van Gelder Studio in one day’s work on 15 February 1967, and the released material comprises everything recorded in that session*, with his regular group members of that era: AC on piano, Jimmy Garrison (JG) on bass and Rashied Ali (RA) on drums. But at this date in the absence of saxophonist Pharoah Sanders(PS), thus reducing the late period quintet of Live at the Villard Vanguard Again! to a quartet. After this studio date, Coltrane would return there exactly one week later on 22 February for a duo recording with RA (Interstellar Space) and in March for three more tracks to be released in late September 1967 on Expression. All but one of the tracks on Stellar Regions were unreleased before (I knew none of it anyway), as #5 Offering had already been used to complete the Expressionalbum. And by the way, the title track #3 (alternate take #9) was an early version of Venus from the duo session with RA one week later.

What is going on here?

Having my CD copy of Stellar Regionsin hand, what did I get?

As an obvious statement already from the back of the cover: Shortness. A return to a noticeable format and compositional structure. 11 tracks (including 3 alternate versions) with a maximum length of just under 9 minutes (#1 Seraphic Light), well … that sounded fairly familiar to me, even compared to a Genesis or Dire Straits LP (which, in the meantime, had found a place a bit farther behind in the rack).

On first listen: Conciseness. Cohesiveness. Control, even constraint. The contrast to Ascension and even more so (although unknown to me), the sprawling marathon improvisations of his live 1966 work (the non-stop concerts of the 1966 tour in Japan!), becomes evident from the start. These pieces are tighter and more concise, the emotional bursts more focused.

Lyrical clarity. Spiritual atmosphere. Much to my surprise. While intense and free, these pieces are balanced with moments of meditative calm. I found lyrical beauty on #1 Seraphic Light, #5 Offering and #4 Iris -the latter being a gorgeous ballad, pleasant rediscovery on re-listening and easily the most traditionally and melodically accessible track on the album.

Is it „free“ jazz“ actually?

Is this free jazz, I wondered? While I have no doubt, that this is a true free jazz album and the right stuff for the readers and makers of the Free Jazz Blog, this album still sits quite on the border for me. Needless to say, by February 1967, Coltrane had abandoned traditional chord progressions and swing rhythms.

Why it may justifiably be called free jazz:

- The protagonist does of course not abandon the extended techniques he had developed over the years - overblowing, shrieking altissimo notes and multiphonics.

- RA displays his non-metric drumming and plays multidirectional rhythms, creating a fluid, rolling wave of percussion rather than playing a traditional steady swing beat.

- The musicians as a whole are not bound by traditional chord progressions. They play with harmonic openness, outside the conventional harmony.

And what makes it distinct from other works of the period, so it may be not:

- Unlike his live performances of this time, Stellar Regions has clear, distinct thematic melodies at the beginning and end of most tracks, providing structural anchors.

- JG‘s bass playing also acts as a massive anchor. Because he uses repetitive and modal tools to anchor the root note, the musicians never fully detach from a tonal center.

- AC‘s chord playing on piano provides a harp-like, meditative harmonic cushion. It is free-form, but it’s deeply melodic and highly tonal as well.

Conclusion:

Stellar Regions uses the vocabulary of free jazz (energy, microtonality, open rhythm, non-metrical drumming) but pours it into shorter, concise and deeply spiritual tone poems, finding a balance between freedom and structure. Instead of plainly breaking the rules or „tearing down walls“, it is all about using freedom to achieve an emotional and spiritual state.

What stands out

I like the more lyrical pieces on this album very much. They really define this album and give it a distinct place in Coltrane’s late period timeline. They a show us a side of Coltrane’s final months that makes already a shift to a more spiritual atmosphere. They touch my heart and make me wistfully curious if more of that kind would have come flowing out of that musician.

Offering (# 5) is a majestic ballad, the emotional center of the session and arguably the most structurally complete composition on the album. The track opens with a beautiful, hymn-like melody, played on tenor with incredible tenderness, sounding like a religious lament. AC enters with resonant low-register block chords. Coltrane’s solo moves away from the melody into intense, microtonal and split-tones. However, because AC sustains chords instead of playing dissonant clusters, Coltrane’s own fiery playing never sounds angry or harsh, but soulful, like a spiritual cry. The track concludes with a return to the opening theme. By the time the melody returns, the storm has cleared, leaving a sense of exhausted peace.

Seraphic Light (#1). If Offering is a grounded prayer, Seraphic Light,the album’s starter, is pure cosmic ascension. While it has a more active, rolling rhythm play from RA, it remains one of the most texturally dense tracks on the album. This track begins not with a saxophone melody but with a rumbling of drums and cymbals from RA. AC establishes a continuous tremolo on the piano, while JG plays an aggressive, bowing bass drone. RA provides a rapid, metrically free tapestry of cymbals and snaredrum hits throughout. When Coltrane enters on saxophone, he plays short, declarative motifs that rise upward in pitch, bypassing a traditional jazz melody entirely. On this track, AC abandons all traditional piano performance boundaries. She does not simply play chords to back up a soloist, but creates a massive swirl of sound. The track builds to a peak where Coltrane‘s solo moves into the stratosphere, played in the extreme altissimo register of his instrument. Yet even throughout this peak, JG‘s grounding bass and AC‘s rolling waves prevent the track from becoming exhausting. It remains radiant and luminous.

Does this album show us a path to the (unrealized) future?

Now, as this year marks the 100th anniversary of John Coltrane’s birth and these recordings are almost his last notes to be captured on tape, it is a compelling „what if“-question: Where would he likely have moved to from here? Does this February 1967 recording – especially its lyrical core (see above) - give us a blueprint of what would have come?

That is open for debate. Coltrane, sadly, recorded this music just five months before his death. We will never definitely know for sure how his music would have evolved if he had lived on. In his Allmusic review (4 ½* by the way), Scott Yanow argues that Stellar Regions offers no real hints of a future path.

However, it may as well be stated that these recordings „represent a suggestion of the evolution his music would have taken had his life not been cut so short“ (David S. Wild, author of the liner notes, June 1995). Stellar Regions implies that Coltrane was heading toward a "chamber free-jazz" where total freedom was guided by internal discipline and structured devotion. Also, Stellar Regions suggests that the 1970s version of John Coltrane would have been less aggressive and far more compositional, spiritual and influenced by eastern aesthetics. It would have been intriguing to see him join his wife Alice in making the shift to World and Spiritual Jazz. Coltrane was already moving toward the cross-cultural, transcendent, meditative music of the 1970s, as evidenced in Alice Coltrane‘s (Journey in Satchidananda, 1971) and Pharoah Sanders‘ albums recorded after his death.

This session from mid-February 1967 still proves that avant-garde music can be profoundly beautiful, universal and divine.

*The liner notes from June 1995 by David S. Wild confirm that the track To Be, released on Expression, with Coltrane on flute and PS rejoining him on piccolo flute, was not actually recorded on that same date, although being credited to that date on its original release.

Also note: a contemporary review in German by Konrad Heidkamp from 09.12.1995, DIE ZEIT 50/1995, is still available for registered readers of DIE ZEIT.

---

Klaus Kitzinger, born in 1967 in Landshut, Lower Bavaria, Germany. Still lives and works there in his daytime job as a lawyer specializing in construction law. A faithful follower of FJB, he got his first hold of free jazz as a teenager in the early to mid 1980‘s, when one enthusiastic pub operator actually brought luminaries like Archie Shepp, Sam Rivers, Joseph Jarman, the Sun Ra Arkestra, Jimmy Lyons/Karen Borca and Andrew Cyrille (spelled „Grille“ in the local newspaper) to his provincial hometown. Besides free jazz, he has an interest in (nearly) everything related to Japanese culture, traditional and modern, thanks to being married to Yuka.

John Coltrane 100: Transition and Sunship

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Brian Earley

When John Coltrane died in 1967 the jazz world felt a startling void. With the release of Expression, Coltrane’s final studio album, it must have felt like a narrative had been cut short of its intended ending. After all, unless Trane had recorded material that had never been released, that was it: no more new music from John Coltrane.

We know the story 100 years after Trane’s birth, however. And did he ever record material that had yet to be released! Alice Coltrane worked relentlessly to preserve John’s towering musical legacy, and we know from Andy Beta’s incisive book on her life that after a long day of raising four children on her own, she would put the kids to bed, sit in meditation, and practice the music that meant so much to her and her late husband. What she also did was listen to unreleased recordings by John and prepare them for release.

Among the recordings made public in the immediate years following John’s passing were two absolutely stunning (I can’t emphasize this word enough–stunning!) recordings by the famed Classic Quartet of Trane, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones: Transitionin 1970 and Sun Ship in 1971.

Transition

McCoy Tyner related to writer David Wild that sometimes John would give them two notes, or maybe just a scale, as the basis of a composition before they recorded. The title track to the album Transition,recorded in the spring of 1965,certainly could be such a piece. The work features a tightly focused quartet that absolutely opens up the gates and begins to tear down the fences. “Transition” is one the group’s wildest, most ferociously open pieces. It’s as though the catalytic power of Ascension or Om has been concentrated into a narrow and controlled conduit. Both the kinetic energy coursing through that conduit and the narrowness of the channel itself create the conditions for tension and combustion.

The “Prayer and Meditation Suite,” on the other hand, is an absolute masterwork. I am of the persuasion that comparing works of Trane to other periods in his life can dangerously undervalue some of his accomplishments. Any suite, be it Meditations or “Prayer and Meditation” would beg comparison with A Love Supreme. Forget all that. “Prayer and Meditation” would stand as one the great works in the jazz canon if it were the only piece Coltrane and the Quartet created. Movement II: “Peace and After” is the sound of a quest for peace complete with all the pain inherent in that search. Movement IV: “Affirmation” picks up where “Transition” left off and rings with crisis, explosiveness, and spiritual urgency.

Violence was always slinking nearby during Coltrane’s life, as it is for us today, and his music embraces this reality, but I would never describe his music as “violent.” Just note the third remaining song on Transition : “Dear Lord.” It is hard for me to imagine there ever existed a world without this vulnerable dedication to peace. Urgency and catharsis. Peace and vulnerability. The circumstances without and the transition within.

Sun Ship

In the nighttime hours of August 26, 1965, John Coltrane and his classic quartet walked into an East Manhattan studio. That year Martin Luther King and hundreds of peaceful protestors were arrested in Selma for wanting voter registration fairness. Malcolm X was shot to death. The first massive contingent of US ground troops landed in Vietnam, and the United States would slaughter tens of thousands of people before the year ended using machine guns and missiles fired from military jets. In Los Angeles, unemployment rates for black Americans grew to levels greater than during the Great Depression, housing discrimination was bolstered by law, and Watts exploded in rioting after a violent encounter between police and a black man.

John Coltrane placed his mouth around his horn and blew. The sound that emerged, a passage of lyrical melody deeply tender and filled with solace, titled “Dearly Beloved,” lifted into the air. John embodied serenity and the path to it. People were dying and being denied their humanity by a power structure that required their destruction, and John never pretended this was not the case. The path to peace traveled through pain, not around it. People are dying right now as you read this, but life’s powerful play goes on, in all of its tragedy and real joy. Afterall, John’s baby boy Ravi had just been born, and John had assembled this collection of musicians to record at night because that day he was busy celebrating his first son, John Jr. 's, first birthday.

Attaining does not come without suffering, but it also arrives with beauty.

Attaining. Sun Ship. Ascent. Amen.

John Coltrane 100: Live at the Village Vanguard Again

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 10:40:00 +0000

By David Cristol

So much has been written about John Coltrane and he's such a widely acknowledged and worshiped figure - one of jazz's top two most iconic artists, along with his once employer Miles Davis - that I don't feel I have anything new to bring to the table. Asked to comment on a favorite Coltrane album, however, I comply, for what it's worth. The first Coltrane album I purchased - a secondhand 1987 CD release - was Live at the Village Vanguard Again, recorded May 28, 1966. Prior to this, I had only heard Coltrane on Miles Davis' Kind of Blue.

Village Vanguard Again was a punch in the gut, a puzzle for the mind and the record that won me over to free jazz for good, although it didn't happen overnight. I initially didn't understand what was going on, what to make of it. But was soon repeatedly attracted by the unhinged, torrential sounds unleashed on lengthy versions of "Naima" (a tender ballad with exquisite chords, here exuding rage and sorrow) and "My Favorite Things" (a distinctly lighthearted song from the movie "The Sound of Music", here given a terminally outrageous, or wonderfully out there treatment, according to your inclinations) interspersed with a six-minutes Jimmy Garrison bass solo. Each time I pressed the play button, I was unable to stop listening until the end of the total running time. The album held some arcane truth I couldn't live without anymore. It was music I had to sort out for myself, keep to myself, not music I could share with friends or relatives, let alone spin at parties... The line up had Alice Coltrane on piano, Pharoah Sanders on tenor sax and flute, Rashied Ali on drums, with Coltrane on tenor, soprano and bass clarinet. I was unaware there was a much-loved Coltrane "classic quartet" then, and that this was not it! Some of the Impulse! catalogue was being reissued at that time (the mid-90s), Sanders' "Tauhid" and "Karma" among the batch, both also expanding my musical outlook. Coltrane's albums and archival releases were dropping in quick succession, each new one a mandatory listen. I stumbled on small-priced, worn out LP copies of "Transition" and "Kulu Se Mama" (both recorded in 1965). I was hooked, although none of those albums, and no other Coltrane record I heard after the 1966 live set, had the same definitive, life-altering effect, or reached the same high as that first exposure to the work.

Could it be that I had started with a peak, a logical conclusion to what had come before? The music was

equal parts perplexing, intimidating, meaningful, dark, luminous, an unrelenting war machine yet brimming with sensitivity, not quite inviting if you were not ready to surrender to its revolutionary approach, but fully uplifting and cleansing if you were.

John Coltrane 100: John Coltrane in Detroit, June 1966

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 04:00:00 +0000

John Coltrane Memorial in Hamlet, N.C.
Photographer unknown.

By Stuart Broomer

If I can write anything meaningful about the music of John Coltrane, it may be about the context in which I came to experience his work live, in 1966, after listening intently to his work for four years on record and writing reviews of some of it as well. One’s juvenilia is embarrassing almost by definition, but that’s my particular gateway here to a world in which Coltrane was playing live a few feet in front of me. 13 months later he passed away. I write this hopefully to communicate something of the challenging world in which Coltrane made his music, that ever more intense, more radically free music, as testimony to his courage and vision as a great artist, as large a person as one might be in that world.

The John Coltrane Reference (Routledge, 2008) by Chris DeVito, Yasuhiro Fujioka, Wolf Schmaler and David Wild, edited by Lewis Porter (Routledge, 2008) is a monumental work of scholarship. After the introductions, there’s a Chronology of Coltrane’s life and career that runs to 357 large pages of fine print, followed by a Discography of 404 similarly sized pages in identical print, followed by 49 more pages of appendices, index, etc.

Very near the Chronology’s conclusion, there’s an entry for the John Coltrane Quintet’s appearance at Detroit’s Drome Lounge from June 17-26, 1966. The personnel, then consistent, is identified as Coltrane, tenor and soprano saxophones; Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone; Alice Coltrane, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Rasheid Ali, drums, Friday to Sunday, matinees on Sunday. Reviewed in Coda (“John Coltrane Quintet – Drome Bar—Detroit” by Stu Broomer, Aug-Sept., 1966, pp.32 - 33). The review is represented by just a few of its sentences, but I’ll restrict myself to the Reference editor’s choices and their punctuation as well.

“This is probably the most moving working band in America (…) Tenor saxophonist Farrell “Pharoah” Sanders is now the most important soloist in the group. (…) When (Coltrane) first heard Albert Ayler in 1962, Coltrane told him he had heard himself playing like that in a dream once. (…). This band has recorded five times but nothing has been released. Perhaps Bob Thiele is hoping Coltrane will return to his old-time sanity. I for one hope he will not”. (Reprinted by permission of the author. All Rights Reserved).

What I’m trying to get at here about John Coltrane is an essential drive for expression and liberation, for liberation from every constraint to discover what’s real or what’s at least possible. If my memories from 60 years ago mean anything, they’re about the value of revolt and the horror of the norm, the judgmental restriction of cultural norms, in some places becoming more restrictive than anything I might have felt 60 years ago (a festival of liberalism by comparison). As a result, I want the music more intense, more personal, more unpredictable and I’ll stand up for it anywhere. But it is not without ambiguities.

As a teenager in the 1960s, I became obsessed with free jazz. It was a promise of freedom from restraint as well as constraint, an explosion of mixed emotions from great sorrow to ecstasy, in effect, perhaps, a promise too far. My absorption in jazz had begun in childhood with the 1957 TV special The Sound of Jazz and followed with the eventual LP. More television: I saw the Robert Herridge Presents episode with Miles Davis and John Coltrane in 1960 and loved it. My brief initial puzzlement and rapid-onset rapture with free jazz started when I picked up the September 1961 Metronome at the corner variety store. It included an epic essay on the jazz avantgarde by the then LeRoi Jones (I still have the essay somewhere — stapled together — the issue is gone). The writing was abstract, mannered and strange but also enchanting (I had already read a paperback of Kerouac’s Tristessa), its subject an arcane revolution. By the time I had purchased Ornette! and Free Jazz a few months later, Metronome had ceased to exist. I had only Down Beat, a magazine at the time sufficiently reactionary to condemn John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy as anti-jazz in a cover story. A few years later, circa 1965, I started writing for Coda, then Canada’s only jazz magazine.

If there’s a shock in that original account (in bowdlerized form), it’s likely the ranking of Sanders’ performance over Coltrane’s. Without digging for the original, I recall moments from that night when I was listening to the dense, tumultuous music and focussing on the brilliant screaming mayhem of the two saxophones, only to open my eyes and discover that John Coltrane was intently hitting a cowbell with a drumstick and Pharoah Sanders was the only person playing a saxophone. This isn’t a criticism of Coltrane. He was one of the greatest musicians who ever played jazz, but we all know now that he was seriously ill and still carrying a heavy musical load. Other memories: I already had certain knowledge that Jimmy Garrison’s solos, as memorably powerful as they were, depended heavily on the bass’s tuning in fourths, and the complex, droning solos dependent to a significant degree on the use of open strings (I was a bass player at the time). At one point in the evening, Coltrane spoke quietly to him (I was sitting at a piano-shaped stage, my ear within four feet of their mouths) specifying the key for one of his extended introductions. Garrison then looked upset, arguing for another key. I wasn’t surprised by the issue. I was surprised that it was happening about four years into Garrison’s tenure in the band.

Another and crucial surprise goes to the heart of the history of free jazz. My party (myself and three others, young musicians from Toronto, three Caucasian, one Japanese) were, in effect, insiders (however “out” we might feel in the Drome). We arrived early, conveying Rashied to the venue since we were staying in the same place, the Detroit Artists Workshop. Arriving early, we found a strange mix of conviviality and formality. Standing just inside the foyer, Jimmy Garrison was shaking hands with patrons as they entered. Even to a bass player, Garrison’s right hand (the plucking one) came as a shock: it felt like a bundle of sticks.

As popular, as great, as John Coltrane was, there was a fundamental divide in the audience about the shape his music was assuming, that was apparent from the time the music began (a shock perhaps influenced by the very music that Impulse was choosing to release). In essence there were two audiences. In the Drome it happened largely along racial lines, generally slightly older blacks on the one hand, and the white audience, many significantly younger, significantly suspended between hip and hippie. One audience looked disgruntled, offering spare, obligatory applause; the other clapped wildly with exclamatory shouts. Late in the evening, Coltrane broke into the opening phrase of his anthem, “My Favorite Things”, its bright coiling phrases instantly recognizable from the first note. It was amazing. With my back to the rest of the audience, I could actually feel the room lift, so strong was the shift in mood, comparable, for a brief instant, to the sun breaching a cloud cover. Within a couple of minutes, the sonic tumult had taken over again, and one could feel, even more intensely, the mood of the room dropping, to frustration and disappointment, perhaps, and most intensely, I felt, the abandonment, the sense of betrayal.

In total, (expanding on Coltrane's grimly disappointed Black audience) the trip seemed at times to be about race but things would get much darker, or should I say lighter (toxic metaphors lurk in our tongue) -- I had gone there with three other young Toronto musicians with whom I played. I had an association with John Sinclair (then in jail on drug charges -- not sure how current John's name is, but his greatest moment of celebrity came when imprisoned during Woodstock: Abby Hoffman interrupted the beginning of the Who's performance with a comment to the effect that Woodstock didn't mean shit while John Sinclair was in jail; then Pete Townsend hit Hoffman with his guitar for trying to take over the Who's stage). In John’s absence, his partner Leni Sinclair was running the Workshop.

I knew The Detroit Artists Workshop through shared performances between Detroit and Toronto, performances arranged by John Sinclair and the Toronto poet Victor Coleman of the Bohemian Embassy, a Toronto coffee house and performance space. Shared performances had included members of Detroit trumpeter Charles Moore’s MC5 with featured musicians that had included Marion Brown and Andrew Hill (through which I got to play bass with Andrew for a weekend among other playing associations). I had also published a poem and a record review in John's mimeo'd music journal Changes, which I think may have only gone to two (or maybe three) issues.

The Workshop was the epicentre of radical culture in Detroit whether the issue was music, race, drugs, economics or language. Later it was the spawning ground of the MC5, of "Up Against the Wall Motherfucker" fame, who John Sinclair managed. He later was a founder of the White Panther Party, a Black Panther support group. When I met the members of [Ahmed] a few years ago in Guelph, talk turned to Detroit. Some members were thinking about visiting Detroit, and Pat Thomas and I found ourselves reminiscing about John, whose poetry Pat had accompanied during an Amsterdam performance. John's contract, Pat recalled, required a private pot smoking loft.

A few days before our group arrived in Detroit, a young inter-racial couple from the Workshop had been violently attacked on the street by the sons of a former Mississippi sheriff whose property adjoined the Workshop at the rear. While we were staying there, the sheriff had invited the residents of the Workshop to a get together/ barbecue to make peace. None of the Workshop residents (naturally) wanted to go and Leni Sinclair asked our Toronto group (whom they were temporarily housing, four males sufficiently groomed to get across the border without close scrutiny) to go as their representatives. We accepted with a certain reluctance, though things (barbecue, blanched pleasantries) went civilly enough.

An hour later, on the way out of Detroit, we stopped at an ice cream outlet before we hit the border. The sons and their wives and children were there as well. On neutral ground, none of us acknowledged the existence of the other.

AN AFTERWORD: 60 years on, I frequently listen to John Coltrane recordings, probably more than to any other historical jazz artist. I have the complete runs of the Prestige and Atlantic recordings and most of the Impulses on CD and the recordings with Monk and Miles Davis and isolated one-offs like Blue Train on Blue Note. My usual listening choices run the gamut from the Prestige and Atlantic recordings (especially Olé, the last of them, with Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy and Art Davis added to the working quartet of McCoy Tyner, Reggie Workman and Elvin Jones). My listening range ends with one of my favorites, Meditations, with the “classic” quartet augmented by Rashied Ali and Pharoah Sanders. I hardly ever, if at all, listen to much that came later. Whether that’s because the actual experience of the last quintet live was enough – sufficiently intense -- to satisfy my need for that music, or that the music is so unstable or destabilizing that I don’t feel a need to hear it in its “frozen” form. The sole exception made among recordings of the last stage is Interstellar Space, the recording of four duets with Rashied Ali, recorded in February 1967, though it too is rarely played, singled out perhaps for the relative coherence of the music and the focus of its intensity.

John Coltrane 100: Exploring the Archives

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 04:00:00 +0000

John Coltrane - One Down, One Up: Live At the Half Note (recorded 1965, released 2005), My Favorite Things: Coltrane At Newport (recorded 1963 and 1965, released 2007), Offering: Live At Temple University (recorded 1966, released 2014), A Love Supreme: Live In Seattle (recorded 1965, released 2021), Evenings At the Village Gate: John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy (recorded 1961, released 2023)

By Lee Rice Epstein

1965 was remarkably transformative year in Coltrane’s history. Thankfully, through its ongoing archival releases, Impulse Records has continued to fill in the picture of how, as an artist, he continually pushed himself and his band, deeply and passionately giving his all at all times. One Down, One Up takes us right to March 26, 1965, where Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones play an astonishingly high-wire, high-energy “One Down, One Up” that runs nearly 30 minutes. The electricity crackling between players says exactly why Coltrane still matters, why he’s still adored, and why countless players of all kinds continue to study and revere him. The set’s recapitulation on the Newport stage months later (the second half of My Favorite Things: Coltrane At Newport), more clearly shows how the group was thinking about and working through their headiest ideas. That the Newport set was released with a 1963 performance featuring Roy Haynes in the drummer seat gives some additional dimensions to the quartet’s changes over time. Tyner and Jones moved on by the next year, while Garrison held down the Alice Coltrane, Rashied Ali, and Pharoah Sanders group. Reportedly, he didn’t play with them in the fall of

1966, when Coltrane led a phenomenal set at Temple University. Offering has been alternately reviled and lauded, cited by some as a polished but unnecessary bootleg for completists only. But, if one just takes a step back and considers Offering happening the same season as Albert Ayler’s seminal European tour—with the quintet of Ayler, Donald Ayler, Michel Samson, Bill Folwell, and Beaver Harris—and if one wants to get really interested in sympathetic wavelengths, you hear Coltrane singing reportedly for the first time ever during “Leo” on November 11, 1966, while Ayler was recorded doing the same on a performance of Sanders’s “Japan” the previous night, November 10, 1966. That Ayler later screamed during his memorial performance for Coltrane would be too on the nose if someone manufactured it. The two shared both intellectual and spiritual bonds, a beautiful thing we’re scarcely able to know of or understand even partly.

As the saying goes, it would have been enough to get these first three albums, but the 2020s has produced two seemingly impossible sessions: a live recording of “A Love Supreme,” also from 1965, and an unissued session with Eric Dolphy from 1961, featuring “Greensleeves” and “Africa.” What, truly can be said about Coltrane and Dolphy that doesn’t lead to a mountain of what-if or if-only hypotheticals? The hour-plus set is fiery and rich with ideas in motion. If someone told me this was 1963 or ’64, I wouldn’t doubt it. By ’61, both Coltrane and Dolphy were already well out in front of many contemporaries, and the mutual support demonstrated during their brief time together is beautifully realized here. On A Love Supreme (fascinatingly, recorded a couple days after Live In Seattle),Coltrane leads a kind of crossover group, with Tyner, Garrison, and Jones as the core quartet, joined on the tour by Sanders and Donald Garrett on bass, with Carlos Ward jumping in on sax at Coltrane’s invitation. Both Coltrane and Sanders add percussion along with Jones’s drumming, and if Offeringrepresents some kind of approaching end point in Coltrane’s art, the Seattle performance of “A Love Supreme” leads in the same direction, ever forward.

John Coltrane 100: The John Coltrane Quartet Plays

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 04:01:00 +0000

**John Coltrane – The John Coltrane Quartet Plays (Impulse, 1965)**

By Dan Sorrells

Most of my listening hours are spent on freely improvised music. But when it comes to Coltrane, I love the classic quartet, 1965, right before things broke open (and the group, apart). The John Coltrane Quartet Plays is what I reach for most often. “Chim Chim Cheree” starts like another “My Favorite Things,” but less than a minute in, Coltrane’s already chafing against the melody, and after two he and Jones are fairly bursting out of Tyner’s measured vamp. “Brazilia” and “Nature Boy” enticingly point toward the searching explorations to come, where ideas were turned inside-out in dizzying, kaleidoscopic epics (something further evidenced by various surfaced recordings from the Half Note during the same period, where “Chim” and “Song of Praise” stretch to twice the length). The sense that traditional song forms must still be made to contain Trane’s increasingly frenetic probing lends indelible tension to the music; these songs are like swelling water ballons, but they’re filled with boiling water. For those of us in the future, it’s all the more heightened when you know just how far things will get pushed, even before the close of the year.

John Coltrane 100: Live at the Village Vanguard

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 04:00:00 +0000

John Coltrane – Live at the Village Vanguard (Impulse, 1997)

By Kenneth Blanchard

There are certain recordings that stretched my grasp of jazz (and indeed music). Andrew Hill’s Point of Departure comes to mind. Coltrane’s LVV collection is another. Recorded over four nights in 1961 at the Jerusalem of Jazz, only five of the originally recorded numbers were released in the following two years. The 1997 box set is a genuine treasure. The structure of the music remains within standard hop bop spaces, but the moods blossom into an entirely new ecosystem. The inclusion of Eric Dolphy was one of Trane’s most brilliant moves. On Naima, Spiritual, India , his low horns (also sax and bass clarinet) perfectly match Trane’s tenor and soprano sax. Trane’s interest in alternative spiritual and musical traditions is obvious enough. His famous “sheets of sound” slide in and out of every line. I find the articulation of Coltrane’s own personality to be as vivid here as on any of his recordings.

John Coltrane 100: A Sunday Morning Record

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 04:00:00 +0000

DUKE ELLINGTON & JOHN COLTRANE - s/t (Impulse!, 1963)

By Ferruccio Martinotti

Sunday morning. We weren't even looking through Trane’s records, we already had a clear plan for the centenary. Then we spotted it. Or rather, it was almost as if IT was looking at us. There it was, humble and elusive amidst some truly gigantic "neighbors": “Duke Ellington & John Coltrane”. When a title says it all. How long had it been since it last took a spin on the turntable? A long, long time. So, we not only dusted it off, rescuing it from obscurity and oblivion but also cast it as the star of our own humble contribution to the Coltrane forum’s tribute. A quick preamble. Our favorite Trane is the one who burned all his bridges behind and embarked on the Path of Spiritual Ascension alongside Alice, Pharoah, Garrison, and Ali: for us, THIS is John’s definitive group. Since we are certain that our colleagues will, as usual, handle albums like ‘Interstellar Space”, “Olatunji”, “Live in Japan” et al, with the utmost mastery, we opted for a record you won’t find on "100 all-time best" playlists or among the essential albums by either Duke or Trane, yet one that is nonetheless deeply compelling. First things first: when and how did this encounter (the only one, if we’re not mistaken) between two of the greatest musicians of all time take place? The date: September 26, 1962. The setting: Rudy Van Gelder’s Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, a place so legendary that, like Atlantis, one wonders if it ever truly existed. The mastermind: Bob Thiele, a producer at Impulse! The Maestri arrived at the meeting from different trajectories, not just in terms of age, but artistically as well. Duke, at 63, as the old king of the jungle, having already changed the course of music history in the 1920s and 30s, he wanted to show the "young lions" that the time to end up in the zoo hadn't arrived just yet. And judging by the extraordinary “Money Jungle”, recorded right some weeks earlier along with Max Roach and Charles Mingus, he had every right to feel that way. Trane, meanwhile, aged 35, was in a transitional phase. Leading one of jazz’s most sensational lineups ever (Jones, Garrison, Tyner), he had just released his first album for Impulse! in 1962, a record where modal structures were handled sublimely, yet he had not entirely cut ties with a more “mainstream” approach to his music (though, given the musical context, quotation marks are essential here!). It was as if, mid-journey, he had paused to catch his breath and look back one last time, before lighting the fuse and blowing everything wide open. The two arrived at the studio bringing their respective rhythm sections: Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones for Coltrane; Aaron Bell and Sam Woodyard from Ellington’s orchestra. To glimpse a moment of that historic occasion, we can turn to bassist John Lamb, who was present that day: “There was no music on that whole date. Nobody had a chart. We came in and we were standing there, waiting to see what would have happen. Trane would go and sit on the piano bench with Duke. They didn’t talk but Duke would be singing and Trane would go. Then, after they did that for a few minutes, they got up. Trane would go to his microphone, Duke would start playing and the rhythm section, we had to do for ourselves, you know. That’s it. He didn’t even tell you the key. He could communicate without words and Trane could hear it.” The eight-hour session yielded seven tracks: “In a Sentimental Mood”, “Take The Coltrane” and “Stevie” (two sketches composed right there in the studio), “Angelica” and “The Feeling of Jazz” by Ellington; Billy Strayhorn’s “My Little Brown Book”; and Coltrane’s “Big Nick,” a tribute to tenor saxophonist Big Nick Nicholas. At work here are two living legends who set out not to change history, but simply to experience, with mutual respect and admiration, the intimate joy of music. No overbearing displays, no pointless academic showing-off or gratuitous virtuosity. Pure Magic. Even Elvin Jones puts down the sticks of dynamite and picks up the brushes. It is a "Sunday Morning Record", relaxed, atmospheric, and straightforward, reminding us that in our constant search for the ultimate, mind-blowing thrill (which, by definition, is NEVER the last one), we often lose sight of the wonder of simplicity. This is the perfect album to set that right. Let us leave the final word on this experience to Trane: “I was really honored to have the opportunity of working with Duke. It was a wonderful experience. He has set standards I haven’t caught up with yet. I would have liked to have worked over all those numbers again, but I guess the performances wouldn’t have had the same spontaneity. And they mightn’t have been any better.”

May the Journey be light for you, dear John.

John Coltrane 100: Olé & Monk

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Paul Acquaro

John Coltrane - Olé (Atlantic, 1961)

In the mid-1990s I had just graduated from undergrad with a degree in Journalism and absolutely no idea what to do next. I spent the following summer living in a shared house with five other people about my age, one of whom was a good friend and musical partner in our band called “Joe Joe the Dog Face Boy.” We were working, we were playing music, all in all, it was fine even if a bit of a confusing time in life.

In the living room of the house, next to my room, was a shelf with a bunch of records on it. The records belonged to my friend, who had just been gifted them by his father. He had placed them on the shelf not knowing what to do with them - I am not sure that he even had a record player at this point, as it was the heyday of CDs afterall. I, however, did have a record player that had been accompanying me all through college and would be my only constant companion for the next twenty years or more, so the records, a rather eclectic mix of music from the 60s and 70s, would end up often on my stereo. This was how I encountered Olé.

Olé, John Coltrane’s last album for the Atlantic label, released in 1961, was recorded with his long-time associates MyCoy Tyner on piano and Elvin Jones on drums, which already likely brings certain harmonic and rhythmic sounds to mind. Joining them was trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, bassists Reggie Workman and Art Davis, and the great Eric Dolphy on flute and alto sax.

It was the title track that caught my ear. Extending over the whole side A of the album, it’s a modal feast that builds on a vamp derived from a Spanish folk song. Here, it starts with a single churning bass line and Tyner’s pulsating chords balancing on Jones' driving swing. Soon, Coltrane joins on soprano sax with an approach reminiscent of his playing on ‘My Favorite Things.’ Then, Dolphy lends his flute to the mix, paving the way for Hubbard’s solo, from which the track really takes off. It was rhythmically dense music, but not overly dissonant or harsh; however, for ears that could listen to jazz but were more attuned to rock, it was the perfect hook - a little more advanced than what I was used to, but not too steep of a climb. The B-side’s, ‘Dahomey Dance’ and ‘Aisha’ were a bit more rooted in the ‘jazz’ I knew. I enjoyed them, but it was the A-side that pushed me as a listener.

Critics have called Olé a transitional album. Aside from the label change, Coltrane was also headed towards more experimental realms. For me, Olé and that pile of records also came at a transitional time, and helped reveal new paths and possibilities.

Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane (Jazzland, 1961)

My plan was to next dig into something in that experimental realm. I had my sights on Offering: Live at Temple University, a live album recorded in 1966, shortly before Coltrane passed away, and released posthumously by Resonance Records in 2014. A funny thing happened, however, along the way. As I was pulling up the recording, I passed by Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane and stopped in my tracks. Also released in 1961 on the Jazzland label, this set of evergreen Monk tunes that had been recorded by Coltrane and Monk in '57 and '58 with changing rhythm sections. Two seconds of the opening ‘Ruby, My Dear’ and I knew I’d wanted to spend a little time awith this one again before moving on.

As the story goes, Coltrane was addicted to heroin and had just been fired from Miles Davis’ group. He took this break, and cleaned himself up and started to play with Monk. A residency at the Five Spot in NYC in ‘57 is the stuff of legends and a concert recording of the two from 1957 was discovered and released in 2005 by Blue Note, lends credence to the stories. Entitled Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall, it underscores the copacetic musical relationship found on the original release.

Back to that recording: the tune that stopped me in my tracks, the slow moving ‘Ruby, My Dear’ begins with such a melancholic saxophone playing the yearning melody that it instantly romanticizes any space where it’s played. ‘Tinkle, Tinkle,’ with its playful and up-tempo melody gives Coltrane a chance to unfurl those ‘sheets of sound’ that he’s famous for. Similarly on ‘Nutty’, the sheets return in a generously flowing solo, studded at key points with with reminders of the melody. Drum and bass outlining the tune, Monk waiting to come back in with the melody, before abstracting it into Improvisational flurries.

This album album is a high point in two musical catalogs that are festooned with them.

John Coltrane 100: Blue Train & More

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Nuno Catarino

Like many others, my gateway into the Coltrane universe was the inevitable Blue Train, a 1997 CD reissue, with the cover altered with different tones from the original edition. I was beginning to discover jazz and, beyond the variations on the title track, it was the vertigo of “Moment’s Notice” that must have won me over at that early stage. And, of course, the free sound of the saxophone, and the fascinating process of its discourse construction in real time — fascinating for someone who, until then, knew nothing of any form of improvised music. From there, there were several landmark records, in a process that did not follow chronology: it went through the duet with Johnny Hartman, Live at Village Vanguard , the space journey of Meditations, all the way to the devotional magic of A Love Supreme, reading the booklet while following the music, and the pinnacle of Ascension. Along the way, an unavoidable landmark, Giant Steps (as with Ornette’s records, the title also announced the jazz that was coming) with its timeless title track and the melancholic sweetness of “Naima”. I was discovering the albums in no particular order, finding the records or having them find me in a random way, and then gradually organizing Coltrane’s journey in my head, as if piecing a puzzle together. In that process, my favorite album then remains my favorite to this day: My Favorite Things. Too mainstream, too easy, some might say. On ’Trane’s path, a milestone. Not yet the classic quartet, but almost there: McCoy Tyner on piano, Elvin Jones on drums, Steve Davis on bass (Jimmy Garrison would join shortly afterwards). Coltrane takes up the soprano saxophone and transforms a well-known popular melody into a piece of his own; starting from the original melody, he transforms it through a profound process of unfurling. From this point on, it would become one of his signature tunes, evolving into other, much more advanced and deconstructed versions. But this is the start. The LP setlist also has three songs that touch the soul of anyone who loves the history of jazz: one by Cole Porter, “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye”, and two by the Gershwins: “Summertime” and “But Not for Me”. In the context of Coltrane's quest and discography, My Favorite Things is a turning point. And, in my own listener's journey, it's music that affects me deeply.

Nuno Catarino is editorial coordinator of jazz.pt since 2022. He contributes to the national newspaper Público, where he has written since 2007. He is the author, with Márcia Lessa, of the book Improvisando (2019).