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Tenor and soprano saxophonist John Coltrane had recently signed with the newly formed Impulse. The headlong rush of the tenor saxophone features "Chasin' the Trane" and "Impressions" still leave me amazed even though I have heard them many times. Coltrane's friend and colleague Eric Dolphy sits in on several performances on alto saxophone and bass clarinet, adding another unique solo voice and added texture in the ensemble passages. Gathered here on one four-disc set and nicely remastered, it is clear that Coltrane's band was the state of the art at that time, and threw down a gauntlet that few have approached in the intervening years.
Like many musicians of the period, Coltrane was interested in the sounds produced by people of other countries and this led him to compose the beautiful "India" which receives several exploratory readings allowing Coltrane and Dolphy to continue their search for new sounds unabated, as do the performances of "Spiritual" which review the gospel tradition and the standard "Greensleves" which is a haunting feature for soprano saxophone. The sixteen minute version of "Chasin'" that was featured as side two of the original LP is still in my mind one of the most amazing and audacious accomplishments in the history of jazz. This was one of the things that led tin-eared critics to label Coltrane as a deliberately ugly "anti-jazz" musician, but closer listening reveals this to be an awesome, logical and inherently beautiful piece of music. The music here is so much larger than life it is hard to believe that it was created by mortal beings in the basement club or a concrete and steel city. "Impressions" would become one of the pieces that all future tenor saxophonists would measure themselves against, and the performances here are blistering examples of saxophone mastery. record label and settled on what wold be his greatest band featuring pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones when these epochal recordings were committed to tape in 1961.
Tyner lays out and Garrison is drowned out as Coltrane and Jones break free of structure and reach for the stars. One of the high water marks of modern jazz, the music presented here is absolutely life affirming. Only three performances were released on the original LP, with the remainder trickling out over the years on different albums and compilations. There are relatively few compositions on this set, and each is given multiple performances, allowing the listener to see how the band developed different improvisations for each composition as the time went on.
Tread carefully. And they should be taken as such. These reviews are buy fans of Coltrane.
I think you will either like this, or not like it. I have never understood the fascination with Coltrane's experimental period. As the title of my review indicates this is only for the not so faint of heart.
There is good jazz in this period, but I think there are much better choices then Coltrane Avant playing on this highly overrated set. Borrow this if you can before you decide to buy. Not much middle ground.
If I wanted to explore the Avant Garde, and had never done so I would not recommend this.
I'm 19 years old, and have enjoyed listening, but most of all, playing classical and jazz music whether it be on the flute, electric guitar, or drum practice pad, yet i've realized after purchasing this recording that with 7 years of experience I still can't understand Coltrane's genius.I keep listening to this recording and it all sounds like high school concert band level (not even jazz band) -_-.I find it hard to believe that that's the case, so i've come to the conclusion that i'm still young and lack experience.i feel embarrassed to post this as an up-and-coming musician, but i'm hoping someone can clear this up for me.
This overtly experimental "mode" will last for the remainder of the Classic Coltrane Quartet's existence (i.e., through September '65)- and for the rest of his life. I see this as part of a recurring dual pattern in Trane's work: an alternation between the digging of raw gems and the subsequent refining of those gems in the crucible of his art - each of these complimentary phases revealing different qualities of that particular "set" of gems. They include Trane's second stint with Miles (MILESTONES, "Green Dolphin Street," KIND OF BLUE), and the beginning of Trane as a "live" working leader of his own band (not merely the designated "leader" of studio-recorded albums, important though they have been up to this point). Still, all of them are essential for understanding John Coltrane. Or, if there were, could we TOLERATE it. I'll leave it at that. This is followed by his more assured 1957 work with Thelonius Monk, and his concurrent Prestige and Blue Note debut sessions as a leader ("Goodbait," "Blue Train," "Moment's Notice," et al). Within a few weeks of Trane's VANGUARD stint (as you can hear in the LIVE TRANE set), he is performing some of these same works in Paris and Stockholm - already refining some of the lines and harmonies he has "dug up" at the VANGUARD.
You cannot help wondering what Trane might have made of his final-phase "raw gems," had he lived for another 5 years. This continuing "phase" will last through at least the end of 1964 and produce his most accessible mature work : BALLADS; COLTRANE; COLTRANE & ELLINGTON; COLTRANE & JOHNNY HARTMANN; LIVE AT BIRDLAND; the fall 1962 & fall 1963 live European performances found in LIVE TRANE; CRESCENT and of course A LOVE SUPREME. (Thomas Merton's COLD WAR LETTERS - the first of which dates from 7 days before the first of these VANGUARD sessions - are of the same kind of ground-breaking nature, have the same kind of mixture of developed and undeveloped ideas). The struggle and foment of these sessions is followed by a more lucid "patch" which seems to emit a hard-won kind of peace: the session of June 10, 1965 which includes "Suite" (a wilder, abbreviated kind of LOVE SUPREME), the astounding "Transition" (perhaps Trane's single greatest recording, if I had to pick just one ) and "Welcome."However, within a mere six days (June 16, 1965), Trane will record "Living Space" and "Vigil" - a daring duet between Trane and drummer Elvin Jones which anticipates the INTERTELLAR SPACE tracks of February 1967 (these are also sax-and-drum duets). (And so is Eric Dolphy, who has been part of Trane's working band since a month or so before the VANGUARD sessions). - it is the vast territory of modal harmony and "line" which will constitute John Coltrane's musical "Living Space," almost to the very end.But by early November 1961, Trane is poised for a more overtly experimental "stretch" - and a deeper exploration of the implications of that modal harmony and "line" which he had made so sweetly palatable in KIND OF BLUE and MY FAVORITE THINGS.
My theory is that being with a genius as idiosyncratic as Monk not only forced Trane to sharpen his intuition as to what he himself was "about," but even made him sound more "lucid" by comparison - and thus gave him a new confidence. (Check out the 1955 Miles/Trane "Little Melonae", or their 1956 "Bye Bye Blackbird" and "Sweet Sue"). First, there is Trane's 1955-56 work with Miles Davis: intriguing, probing, yet rather raw and unformed. These 22 tracks have been judged as if they constituted some kind of artist-approved, "finished" work. I was lucky enough to acquire a cheap 2nd hand copy of this set, on the first day of a vacation. Among other things, this means substantial passages in which pianist McCoy Tyner's crystalline accompaniment is dispensed with for more exploratory (some would say "abstract-sounding") harmonic "digs." That is to say, you wouldn't play this stuff at a dinner party. So regardless of some uneven passages- which in themselves are quite instructive - you could not go wrong by investing in this set. Being a set of mostly posthumoulsy released live "takes," OF COURSE there are passages of raw, unformed-ness, and ideas which were ignored in favor of the development and pursuance of other ideas.That's mostly what live modern jazz, even GREAT live modern jazz, is.
You have to go back to Trane's initial emergence on the scene to really see this. (Talk about recharging one's batteries). And I use the word "alternation" literally, because GIANT STEPS follows KIND OF BLUE by a matter of weeks. Grabowski of this, but if you require exquisitely chiselled statements of Mozartean perfection, spread across a whole series of performances, well, then, modern jazz just ain't your idiom. But they do not, because Trane only approved 5 of these 22 tracks for release during his lifetime. (The February 1967 "Venus" offers a tantalizing clue).
Is there ANYONE doing such things, to this extent, in music, today. And I have to agree with John Grabowski's review - which fearlessly delineates several stringent realites, in a way which is I think entirely fair to the spirit, intentions and results of John Coltrane's work. (It is known that, in the final months of his life, he was practicing with the experimental prototype of an electronic "doubling" apparatus - which enables a wind player to play multiple notes, simultaneously). But overall - as long as you understand "modal" as including, but not restricted to, the designated Western "modes" (i.e., Dorian, Phrygian, Mixolydian, etc). Grabowski's distaste for Coltrane-Cultish "slush, mush & gush," but I will risk it, here: This is a generous, beautifully restored slice of bristling, no-holds-barred, relentlessy self-confrontational, creative LIFE.
Then, following the increasing spiritual awakening signalled by A LOVE SUPREME, the sessions of February and May 1965 take the listener into choppier but exciting waters (THE COLTRANE QUARTET PLAYS, "One Down, One Up," "After the Crescent," etc). Now, having pushed the saxophone to its "natural" technical boundries and a bit beyond- constantly trying for notes higher than the instrument was designed to produce- and yet still possessed of a relentlessly exploratory spirit, I have always suspected that Trane would have benfitted from, or even mastered, the emerging world of electronics and synthesizers. It is during these years, in the midst of this "crucible of alternation," that John Coltrane finds his true Voice. I share Mr. Then come the "paradoxical" years of 1958 through 1960. It is THIS kind of perspective which makes his death a gaping wound in the fabric of African-American improvisational music which has still not healed : not only did his People, and Humanity, lose one of their greatest explorers, but perhaps the emerging electronic jazz idiom was denied the Great Creative Voice it never really had.At least, not in a way equivalent to what Trane did for purely 'acoustical' jazz.
Now, I don't accuse Mr. Overt experimentation is once again the order of the day - and as if to confirm this, in the midst of these sessions Coltrane even re-records "Neptune" / aka "Brasilia" from the '61 VANGUARD sessions. What makes this phase so "paradoxical" is Trane's alternation between two seeming (but related) "scalar" opposites.On the one hand, his arpeggiated "sheets of sound," imposed over lightning-fast harmonic "changes" which push the "coherence envelope" of Bop and Hard Bop to the breaking point (GIANT STEPS, et al).On the other hand, the opening out into the less cluttered "spaces" of modal - as in "scalar" - harmony (KIND OF BLUE, MY FAVORITE THINGS). These VILLAGE VANGUARD tapes, recorded November 1-5, 1961, document one of Trane's more incendiary, more overtly experimental phases. (Not to mention that during this pivotal year, Trane quit his heroin habit, cold turkey).
I've heard eight or ten different live versions of some of Monk's classic tunes -- Blue Monk, `Round Midnight, Misterioso, Straight, No Chaser -- each rendition different. I've seen Brubeck perform three times and he almost never failed to hit for extra bases.When it comes to musicians like Monk and Coltrane, a listener either gets them or they don't. I can't speak to the genius of any artist. Some were hit out of the ballpark, while others left men on base. I received this boxed set as a Christmas gift, and while the uninitiated might care more for the Master Takes single disc version, I very much enjoyed this complete recordings.Recommended, but perhaps an acquired taste. Music -- like literature, a painting or a sculpture -- either speaks to the listener or it doesn't. I've been listening to jazz most of my adult life and understand that its very improvisatory nature, especially in live performances, often results in hits or misses when it comes to exploration of a theme.
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