John Coltrane: A Love Supreme - Live In Seattle

John Coltrane was moving faster than the speed of sound in 1965. Besides divining his place within the music, the world, his God, he was touring; a two week gig with Thelonious Monk at the Village Gate led to Newport then into a frenetic week in Europe. With the classic quartet plus Archie Shepp, Art Davis and Freddie Hubbard he had just completed the mind-bending sonic assault Ascension (Impulse!, 1966). That anyone could keep up with him or think one step ahead of him was Herculean. Few did. That is why we are still fascinated to listen when they do. To discover. To be some small part of something larger.

A Love Supreme: Live In Seattle memorialises for only the second known time; the first full performance of this holy suite was in Antibes, France, on July 26, 1965 released masterfully—after decades of bootlegs, variations, and augmentations galore—as part of A Love Supreme: The Complete Masters (Impulse, 2013).

Discovered in the private collection of Seattle saxophonist and educator Joe Brazil, this blistering October 2, '65 performance culminated a week's residency at The Penthouse, where the fiercely difficult and unapologetically atonal Live In Seattle (Impulse, 1971) was also recorded. Here, we find Coltrane moving singularly beyond the structures and strictures of the summer, expanding the live sound to include not only McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones and Jimmy Garrison but also fellow rogue sax visionary Pharoah Sanders, second bassist Donald Raphael Garrett and also on sax Carlos Ward.

Despite the lack of contemporaneous fanfare, and given the fact that the night was recorded with two microphones, A Love Supreme -Live In Seattle is not only a performance for the ages but a marvelous sounding one as well. Intensely immersive, the music builds upon the original template until it becomes something startlingly original yet again: A revived prayer, a bold logistic, a howling tribute to the soul. Each man is a force of indisputable nature (check out Tyner and Jones especially on "Pursuance: Part III," Coltrane and Sanders free, shrieking energy throughout.) Wheeling, keening, pleading, the music implores the higher power to reveal himself/herself/itself to the club's capacity crowd (275 very lucky souls) and now it implores us, compels us, to pay reverent attention to every moment. To every breath. And pray.