# John Coltrane’s masterpiece breathes new life with ‘A Love Supreme: Live In Seattle’: Video, Photos
- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2021/08/29/john-coltranes-masterpiece-breathes-new-life-with-a-love-supreme-live-in-seattle-video-photos/
- Published: 2021-08-29T11:20:42+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU
**John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, recorded near the close of 1964 and released early
the following year, inhabits an exalted plane beyond the realm of most other albums,
in any musical genre. Easily one of the most celebrated jazz recordings ever made,
it radiates a deep, devotional gravitas — a palpably focused ardor that has long
inspired actual worship, as Jazz Night in America explored in a recent documentary
short.**
For Coltrane — among the most revered saxophonists, then as now — _A Love Supreme
_also stood as a pinpoint moment in a changing picture. The mid-’60s were a period
of hurtling evolution for him, as he pushed ever further into musical catharsis
and away from the familiar moorings of jazz performance. He was seeking a direct
spiritual expression that would set the standard for a cadre of improvisers coming
up behind him, like fellow tenor heralds Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp, who both
appeared on his free-jazz landmark, _Ascension_,in June of ’65_._
That July, a month after the Ascension sessions, Coltrane and his quartet played
the only widely known performance of A Love Supreme, at the Festival Jazz d’Antibes
in Juan-les-Pins, France. The set was included on a deluxe reissue of the album
in 2002; this moment has also been preserved through some brief footage available
online, which can feel almost miraculous to behold.
The Antibes recording has stood as the lone living document of Coltrane’s suite —
until today, when Impulse! announced the October release of A Love Supreme: Live
in Seattle. Recorded at the end of a weeklong residency at The Penthouse by Joe
Brazil, one of Coltrane’s trusted friends, it presents this music in a glorious
new light, and with remarkably clear sound. (Brazil used the club system, two microphones
and an Ampex reel-to-reel, and then preserved the tapes for nearly half a century,
as if guarding a Holy Grail. They were found in his archive after his death in 2008.)
The fact that Coltrane performed _A Love Supreme _in Seattle in 1965 has long been
known to a small circle of dwindling eyewitnesses and deep Trane-ologists — like
jazz historian Lewis Porter, who wrote one of the essays in the new album’s liner
notes. But because there was never any audio documentation, the fact was never more
than a footnote in _A Love Supreme _lore.
/ Courtesy Impulse! Records
A poster advertising Coltrane’s run of performances during which A Love Supreme:
Live in Seattle was recorded.
Besides, there was already a separate chronicle of this engagement: _Live in Seattle,
_a double album released in 1971, several years after Coltrane’s death. (Last year,
the _Seattle Times _included it on a short list of [essential live albums](https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/music/you-cant-go-to-live-concerts-but-you-can-listen-to-these-6-essential-seattle-live-albums/)
made in the Emerald City.) For proponents of Coltrane’s late period, with its plunge
into tumultuous abstraction, _Live in Seattle _is a touchstone. For some other listeners,
it can be a forbiddingly strong elixir. In his book _John Coltrane: The Story of
a Sound_, Ben Ratliff characterized it alongside other albums of the period as “
expressions of blazing single-mindedness; they can express what the poet Robert
Lowell, one of Coltrane’s contemporaries, once called ‘the monotony of the sublime.’”
The music on _A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle _is sublime in every sense of the
word, without a trace of monotony. Its release is as significant an event in jazz-
historical terms as any archival gem unearthed in the last decade or more. But that’s
an academic way of stating the case, which is that this album contains both the
focused fire of _A Love Supreme, _as a call of gratitude to the divine, and the
more chaotic fervor of the “New Thing” then coalescing in Coltrane’s creative circle.
It feels fully realized and bursting with possibility, all at the same time.
Some of this surely has to do with the combination of a telepathic working band
and an eager set of interlopers. Along with Coltrane’s fearless rhythm section —
McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums — the recording
includes robust guest contributions by Sanders, alto saxophonist Carlos Ward and
a second bassist, Donald “Rafael” Garrett. The chemistry among this cohort is fearsome,
and by no means a settled proposition. When the album is released in physical form,
it will include liner notes by Porter and another noted Coltrane historian, Ashley
Kahn, which shed valuable light on this notion and more.
This morning, along with its announcement, Impulse released “A Love Supreme Pt.
IV – Psalm,” the piece that concludes the set and the suite. As even a casual Coltrane-
ologist will tell you, the recitative melody of this movement scans neatly with
the prayerlike poem printed as the liner notes for _A Love Supreme — _a feature
that Coltrane never made explicit, though it holds up to scrutiny; Porter is among
those who [brought this insight](https://www.wbgo.org/music/2020-07-17/a-deep-dive-into-john-coltranes-a-love-supreme-by-his-biographer-lewis-porter-pt-1)
into the public consciousness.
The live version of “Psalm” begins precisely as the album version does: in an anticipatory
rustle of piano and percussion, with Coltrane’s tenor stating the melody in a distinctly
vocal register. Within the first minute, though, he reaches toward an ecstatic mode,
before receding into a simmer. Tyner and Jones are spectacularly attuned to the
flux of his dynamics and cadence, rolling in free tempo through their extrapolation
of the theme. (Pay attention to the moments of ebbing quiet, and how they return
to a fever pitch as naturally as the tide lapping a shore.)
When the piece is over, leaving just a meditative ellipsis of prayer bells, Coltrane’s
audience seems almost too overwhelmed for a proper ovation. (Earlier in the suite—
after “Part III – Pursuance,” for instance — the response is more assured and sustained.)
Perhaps it was the sheer intensity of the experience, which could have made clapping
seem like something other than the appropriate response. Perhaps, judging by the
quiet before a second round of applause, the club patrons were gauging some uncertain
signal from the stage.
Or, as is always possible, it could be that a portion of those in the room simply
weren’t prepared to process what they’d just witnessed. It wouldn’t be the first
time for Coltrane, nor the last. But if they weren’t ready then, some 56 years ago,
we’re surely ready now.
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