Articles by Simon Weil

Circling Om: An Exploration of John Coltrane's Later Works

by Simon Weil
August 6, 2004

Prologue Elvin Jones left John Coltrane's group in January 1966. A couple of months afterwards he declared: “At times I couldn't hear what I was doing--matter of fact, I couldn't hear what anybody was doing. All I could hear was a lot of noise."1 But, shortly after Coltrane's death in July 1967, Jones defended the saxophonist's late music: “Well, of course it's far out, because this is a tremendous mind that's involved, you know. You wouldn't expect ...