Choose artist...
Home   >   Projects

Projects

Artist: John Coltrane
Projects per page:
John Coltrane:

Evenings at the Village Gate

In the summer of 1961, John Coltrane headlined at the celebrated music venue, the Village Gate. With a lineup of musicians that included McCoy Tyner, Reggie Workman, Elvin Jones, and the fiery playing of Eric Dolphy, Evenings at the Village Gate captures the creative and transformative spirit that sprang from the pairing of Coltrane and Dolphy, and the evolving short-lived quintet.

Evenings At The Village Gate: John Coltrane With Eric Dolphy will be released globally July 14 on Impulse! Records/UMe. The first track from the fabled performances, “Impressions,” is available now and you can listen to the track and pre-order the album here.  You can also order a special edition orange vinyl variant here.

Recently discovered at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the recordings on this album—recorded by engineer Rich Alderson as part of a test of the club's new sound system—were seemingly lost, then found, and then disappeared again into the vast sound archives of the Library for the Performing Arts.  The tapes’ circuitous route over several decades seemingly mirrors Coltrane's ongoing musical journey in August of 1961.

John Coltrane:

A Love Supreme, Live in Seattle

After nearly six decades, a private recording of a rare, nightclub performance by John Coltrane of his magnum opus, A Love Supreme, has been released on Impulse! Records/UMe. Recorded in late 1965 on the culminating evening of a historic week-long run at The Penthouse in Seattle, A Love Supreme: Live In Seattle is a musical revelation of historic importance, capturing Coltrane as he began to expand his classic quartet-adding Pharoah Sanders on second saxophone and Donald Garrett on second bass-and catapulting him into the intense, spiritually focused final phase of his career. Today, you can listen to A Love Supreme, Part IV – Psalm.

John Coltrane:

Blue World

In 1964, John Coltrane and his Classic Quartet went into Van Gelder Studios and, in an unprecedented move for Coltrane, recorded new versions of some of his most famous works. This never-before-heard recording, Blue World, will be released on September 27 in CD, vinyl LP and digital editions via Impulse!/UMe.  Early in 1964, the year he recorded A Love Supreme, Coltrane was approached by a Quebecois filmmaker, Gilles Groulx. Groulx was planning his film Le chat dans le sac, a love story set in Montreal with political undertones. A die-hard Coltrane fan, Groulx was fixated on having Coltrane record a soundtrack for his film. Groulx approached Coltrane via a personal connection with bassist Jimmy Garrison, and amazingly, Coltrane agreed. 

Blue World has been mastered from its original analog tape by Kevin Reeves at Universal Music Mastering in New York. The new vinyl edition's lacquers were cut by Ron McMaster at Capitol Studios.

John Coltrane:

1963: New Directions

A selection of Coltrane's 1963 Impulse! recordings, derived from the original albums Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album, John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, Dear Old Stockholm, Newport ‘63 and Live at Birdland

In the brief, bright arc that is the career of John Coltrane, 1963 marks a point of transition between past jazz masterpieces and future work, which would transcend the boundaries of the music itself.  That year's recorded output shows movement in many directions: a look back at the past, continued examination of a familiar repertoire, exploration of more traditional formats and a look forward at compositions and approaches that would further extend the reach of jazz.

John Coltrane:

Both Directions at Once - The Lost Album

On March 6, 1963, John Coltrane and his Classic Quartet - McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones - recorded an entire studio album at the legendary Van Gelder Studios. This music, which features unheard originals, will finally be released 55 years later. This is, in short, the holy grail of jazz.

Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album will be released on June 29 on Impulse! Records, Coltrane's final and most creative label home.

The first week of March in 1963 was busy for John Coltrane. He was in the midst of a two-week run at Birdland and was gearing up to record the famed John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman album, which he did on March 7. But there was a session the day before that was the stuff of legend, until now.

On Wednesday, March 6, Coltrane and the quartet went to Van Gelder Studios in Englewood, NJ and cut a complete album's worth of material, including several original compositions that were never recorded elsewhere.  They spent the day committing these to tape, taking time with some, rehearsing them two, three times, playing them in different ways and in different configurations.