Acknowledgment john coltrane biography

Listen to the album john coltrane a love supreme

A love supreme part 1 ( acknowledgement )

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John Coltrane&#;s spiritual opus A Love Supreme was recorded on this day (December 9) at Van Gelder Studios in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, in It was released the following January. The album signaled a monumental shift in Coltrane&#;s career, both on a personal and musical level. Having recently quit drugs, the visionary saxophonist dedicated himself to clean living and spirituality, studying scripture from various Islamic schools of thought and the African-American church. Progressing from the &#;sheets of sound&#; style that governed so much of his previous playing, he found new creative inspiration in the music of India and South Asia. You can hear all of those elements at work in &#;Acknowledgement,&#; the opening segment of the A Love Supreme suite, which finds Coltrane and his classic quartet — with Elvin Jones on drums, Jimmy Garrison on bass and McCoy Tyner on piano — striving toward a higher musical dimension.

Tags:A Love Supreme, John Coltrane

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John Coltrane and the Meaning of Life

Few jazz musicians inspire more respect or demand more attention than John Coltrane. Elvin Jones, Coltrane's drummer in "The Classic Quartet" (), said that most people who listen seriously to John Coltrane's music eventually acquire all of his recordings. I find that those who hear Coltrane for who he was want to hear all that he was. I am one of these completists, ever scanning music stores and the Internet to find new releases. The man behind the music fascinates me as well. I have collected a large library of books about John Coltrane, such as Lewis Porter's definitive biography, John Coltrane: His Life and Music, and those highlighting aspects of his music, such as Coltrane: The Story of a Soundby Ben Ratliff. Although he was a quiet man, some of his ruminations are funnen in Coltrane on Coltrane. The books keep coming, and inom keep buying and reading them&#;as do many other Coltrane aficionados.

The man is simply compelling. Few are t

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Playback with Lewis Porter!

Now that we’ve examined what Coltrane had planned, by examining all of his handwritten sketches, let’s examine how the recording of A Love Supreme actually turned out, beginning with the first movement, “Acknowledgement.” (It is sometimes announced at concerts as “A Love Supreme,” because it features the Main Motif so prominently, but that’s not what Coltrane called it.)

You will notice in this discussion that there are many alternate takes from the second day, with Archie Shepp, but almost none from the first day, the quartet session that produced the original album. (You can also see this by looking at the contents of the set that I’ve been referring to, The Complete Masters.) It is unheard of for any recording to be completed without a number of “outtakes.” So where are they? Well, in the early ‘70s, many original Impulse tape reels were thrown out—trashed! It’s a long story which I’ll tell you at another time. In short, we are lucky to have wh