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
Emphasis, Stuttgart 1961 cover

Emphasis, Stuttgart 1961

Jimmy Giuffre, Steve Swallow, Paul Bley
Unit Structures cover

Unit Structures

Cecil Taylor
Speak Low II cover

Speak Low II

Lucia Cadotsch
What Exit cover

What Exit

Mark Feldman
The Cortège cover

The Cortège

Mike Westbrook Orchestra
Disrespectful cover

Disrespectful

Tim Lefebvre, JZ Replacement
Quatrain cover

Quatrain

John Zorn
Nonplaces cover

Nonplaces

Philip Zoubek Trio
Colour Yes cover

Colour Yes

Matthew Halsall