A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle cover

A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle

Recorded
Released

In late September and early October 1965, John Coltrane played at the Penthouse in Seattle, Washington. Impulse! Records taped one night of music for the album Live In Seattle, and percussionist Joe Brazil made a private recording of this set, which is one of only two times Coltrane is known to have performed his immortal suite A Love Supreme live. The band is expanded, and so is the music. In addition to pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison, and drummer Elvin Jones, Pharoah Sanders is on tenor sax, Carlos Ward is on alto, and a second bassist, Donald Rafael Garrett, is up there, too. The studio version of ALS is 33 minutes long; this performance runs 75, with each of the four movements radically extended and solo and duo interludes serving as bridges. Between “Acknowledgement” and “Resolution,” we get a short Garrison-Garrett duo; between “Resolution” and “Pursuance,” Jones takes a solo; and between “Pursuance” and “Psalm,” Garrison returns to the spotlight for a 10-minute bass solo. Coltrane himself is playing with the raw freedom he’d explore until the end of his life, but the strength of the music he’d composed is still audible at the eye of this hurricane.

Phil Freeman

Suggestions
The Two Halves cover

The Two Halves

Finnegan Shanahan, Contemporaneous
Contact cover

Contact

Pharmakon
Brubeck cover

Brubeck

Liam Noble
Pressure cover

Pressure

Splashgirl
Protect Your Light cover

Protect Your Light

Irreversible Entanglements
Parastrophics cover

Parastrophics

Mouse on Mars
Live / Shapeshifter cover

Live / Shapeshifter

Hamid Drake, In Order to Survive, William Parker, Cooper-Moore, Rob Brown
The  Eleventh Hour cover

The Eleventh Hour

Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble
Enesco Re-Imagined cover

Enesco Re-Imagined

John Hébert, Lucian Ban