"I believe Coltrane would have embraced spirituality as his full-time mission if he had lived longer."
When I lived in San Francisco in the late 80s, there was a small storefront on Divisidero Street that housed the Church of Saint John Coltrane. I used to drop in on Sundays for "mass" on occasion. Someone stood up front, under the painting of John as a Russian orthodox icon, and said a few words about love, compassion, community, and ultimately, music. Then everyone said "amen," and took out their instruments and commenced to worshipful, holy jamming.
They are still around as far as I know -- https://www.coltranechurch.org/ -- Archbishop King and them are and have been doing very substantial amazing Coltrane Music Ministry for over 50 years, my one visit was super transformative, and I was able to play with them on Spiritual which I had been working up a solo version of at the time. This is like 2018 ish. I strongly recommend visiting and/or supporting from a distance in some way.
I’m not sure where they are doing services now, but make it a point to attend every now and then to reset. Last attended at St Cyprian’s on Turk, also random storefront in lower Fillmore. An essential part of the fabric of SF for me.
“This is the first time that I have received all of the music for what I want to record,” he told her.
Note that word: Received. He didn’t say composed. He didn’t say created. It was a gift from something larger than himself - This is the magic of creativity, a gift from the gods/muse I dare say.
Great article, agree on all points. Great to celebrate this album. Recently I find I (semi-ritually perhaps) put this on when traveling when I arrive in a new lodging. Something about a full Love Supreme listen through connects my better parts to the new place and the goals at hand. And make no mistake : this is serious devotional music, the quintessence of what religion came from and is supposed to be based on. I have noticed that secularized jazz writers or biographers often downplay or warp the truly overt theistic and religious timbre of this entire album due to their own issues -- I am very happy that Ted has leaned into what seems to me the true spirit of Trane's vision, message and experience. A very rich realm from this point of view.
I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the term Collective Effervescence, but I feel that it would do musicians and artists (and of course beyond just them) well to familiarize themselves with what may be the emergent origin point of spiritual practice and perhaps, to an extent, transcendent experience. It reads as what you’re describing. I don’t think it’s a mere coincidence that devotion tends to be so commonly tied to musical performance, despite having been abstracted or alienated from each other within broader social purview over time. I think Coltrane’s music is a reminder of this being the case, as long as it’s being regarded with complete context.
I think that in trying times the world actually needs less cynicism, less irony and sarcasm. Coltrane was as earnest as they get! We should be brave enough to follow his example. Dare to be like Trane.
I grew up in a musical household where my Dad played saxophone and his "Man" was John Coltrane. Trane's music was among the first sounds I heard as a baby (I was born in '64) and then growing up, and eventually becoming a sax player too, Trane was/is my man too!
I remember a specific day when my dad sat me down at 6 years old and put on My Favorite Things from the "Selflessness" album (live at Newport), and then I Want To Talk About You from the same album. He asked me what I thought about it. While I couldn't quite comprehend what I had heard, I listened to both in their entirety and felt like the ground shifted under me. I was changed.
I make it a point to listen to A Love Supreme in it's entirety at least once a year, and sometimes more. This is not something one does casually, like putting it on in the background while I do chores. It's an immersive experience, a trip, a ride that I love to take with all my attention and a great pair of headphones. Long Live John Coltrane. Your music lives forever!
“But if you follow those streams back to their source, it’s Coltrane’s maximalism, not Miles’s minimalism that sets them in motion.”
I assume you are aware of what Steve Reich said about the birth of musical Minimalism. That he was in Terry Riley’s original ensemble when Riley was trying to make “In C” but it didn’t work. Reich was a huge Coltrane fan and had listened to Coltrane’s “Africa Brass”which is all in the same key, so he suggested to Terry Riley in order for it to work it needed a “pulse”. So John Coltrane is literally the originator of Minimalism.
Stranger still are the origins of Reich’s tape loops / phase music which happened by accident. While out making a field recording a dove flew by the microphone and when Reich played back the doubled recording it was the first time he heard phasing. He says his entire career/life essentially spawned from that one momentary realization.
And then there’s Reich’s - Tehillim (Psalms) which are literally Psalmic rituals and were usually combined with his piece "Desert Music" as a peace ritual to ward off Nuclear war. Consequently Tehillim (Psalms) is Reich's least recognized, and least performed masterpiece (according to him.)
Then there's all the early electonic musicians, including Brian Eno, The Orb etc who listened to Steve Reich and heard Reich's pulse and also the tape loop doubling Frippertronics etc.
Lastly there’s Andre 3000 who openly said he was listening to a ton of Steve Reich before he created New Blue Sun. So you can definitely say it all goes back to Coltrane, which it does, but that would be missing some literary figures who were doing powerful rituals like you describe right before A Love Supreme, but that’s a story for another day.
I will add my little piece to these beautiful comments. My husband and I had only been dating a week (our first date was on MLK Day in 2016) when I invited him to the Jazz weekend my church was hosting. Dianne Schurr performed Saturday night - heady stuff. He and I were so taken with each other and the music that I invited him back to church the next morning. They performed Paul English’s The Gospel According to John Coltrane, an homage to A Love Supreme, as the service. https://paulenglishmusic.com/the-gospel-according-to-john-coltrane We would marry in that church six months later. So whenever I experience the album and hold the liner notes, it is even thicker with meaning. Thank you, Trane, for reminding us all of a Higher Love. Thank you, Ted, for reminding us too.
A wonderful deep dive on this. I love this type of analysis and thank you so much for another chance to go back and re-listen to this album, yet again.
Thank you so much for your consideration of all of this. No matter how much Coltrane is appreciated, there’s room for more.
Yes! One does “receive” melody. If you’re lucky enough to discover even one, it’s humbling. And if you study spirituality, philosophy, Shakespeare or name goes here, you become a better bass / sax / whatever player. Never subscribed to Gladwell’s line about “talent being the desire to practice”. Doubt it was “practice” for JC. He was receiving and who wouldn’t want to?
I have always understood “Resolution” here not in musical terms (the resolution of a chord progression) but as a moment of resolve, and hence a starting point. Coltrane “acknowledges” something to begin, such as a spiritual quest. Then he “resolves” to do something, such as undertake that quest. Then he “pursues” something, such as actually going on that quest. Then he sings a sacred song, a “Psalm”. Acknowledgement, resolution, pursuance, psalm: the steps of a quest.
"Crescent" was recorded right around the same time as "A Love Supreme" but doesn't get the amount of press and love of the latter. It seems underrated to me; I love it; it is "Love Supreme's" opposite, serene and meditative rather than urgent and churning. If you haven't listened to "Crescent," I highly recommend it.
Thanks, Ted, for a profound look at a profound work. But can anyone help me decode the Coltrane Circle? (You can see it by clicking the “Coltrane Circle” hyperlink in the second paragraph after the first embedded video.)
The outer circles depict the chromatic scale repeated across five octaves, with each octave indicated by a numeral inside a box. The star, while a powerful symbol, simply connect each C pitch in each octave. At a glance, this doesn’t seem particularly profound — if he’d written the pitches for four octaves, we’d see a square. With six octaves, we’d get a Star of David, etc. Likewise, the web of lines simply connects every pitch to the center point of the star, which is pretty, but doesn’t tell us much.
But then, there are mysteries, notably the heart-shaped trios of chromatically adjacent notes. These indicate circles of fifths (via ascending fourths) across the five octaves. (Aha — it takes five octaves before the ascending fourths circle back to the original C pitch.) He also indicates the same series of ascending fourths originating from pitches both a half-step above and below the C starting point — that’s three notations of the circle of fifths, staring from pitches B, C, and C#. It’s a graphically striking way of depicting an exceedingly familiar musical concept. Is there world-altering Einsteinian insight here?
Maybe! Do the three-pitch clusters suggest that Coltrane arrived at his chromaticism by slip-sliding between chromatically adjacent keys?
Also, what about the mirror-image numerals (inside the circle near the top of the diagram)? One line ascends from one to seven, and then descends. The other counts down from seven before ascending again. Do these represent the seven pitches of a diatonic scale? And if so, what do they tell us, and how do they relate to the overall diagram?
I’d never encountered this image before you cited it, Ted. So thanks too for that!
Wonderful piece. Thank you. A Love Supreme has always felt like a spiritual challenge to me...music that requires the very openness it celebrates. A high-volume, encompassing mindfulness. It's an inspiration for everything I try to do in my own work.
I look at John Coltrane as one of those rare spiritual avatars that come to this world infrequently. Jacob Collier may also be in that category - pure love and musical genius. Thanks for reminding us of this album that I return to often.
The Gary Bartz piece “A Song of Loving/Kindness” is a beautiful tribute to Coltrane. What a legacy Coltrane left.
Please no. The names John Coltrane and Jacob Collier should never appear in the same sentence. Unless that sentence reads: “individuals favourably comparing the talents of John Coltrane and Jacob Collier should be immediately imprisoned”
Music and authoritarianism don’t go well together. Perhaps you have not listened to any of his inspirational work, nor are familiar with the tremendous range of his musical collaborations.
1 of those rare times where an artistic document lives up to all the hype & its reputation! (Used to listen to this before taking off on a trip: hitchhiking or whatever!)
"I believe Coltrane would have embraced spirituality as his full-time mission if he had lived longer."
When I lived in San Francisco in the late 80s, there was a small storefront on Divisidero Street that housed the Church of Saint John Coltrane. I used to drop in on Sundays for "mass" on occasion. Someone stood up front, under the painting of John as a Russian orthodox icon, and said a few words about love, compassion, community, and ultimately, music. Then everyone said "amen," and took out their instruments and commenced to worshipful, holy jamming.
They are still around as far as I know -- https://www.coltranechurch.org/ -- Archbishop King and them are and have been doing very substantial amazing Coltrane Music Ministry for over 50 years, my one visit was super transformative, and I was able to play with them on Spiritual which I had been working up a solo version of at the time. This is like 2018 ish. I strongly recommend visiting and/or supporting from a distance in some way.
I’m not sure where they are doing services now, but make it a point to attend every now and then to reset. Last attended at St Cyprian’s on Turk, also random storefront in lower Fillmore. An essential part of the fabric of SF for me.
“This is the first time that I have received all of the music for what I want to record,” he told her.
Note that word: Received. He didn’t say composed. He didn’t say created. It was a gift from something larger than himself - This is the magic of creativity, a gift from the gods/muse I dare say.
The Muse is real.
Zero doubt about that.
Exactly. ZERO. Once you experience it you know for sure that 'you' did NOT just create that.
Similar to the notion of “terma” in Tibetan Buddhist teachings.
Never heard about "terma" before but I have now looked it up and yes indeed it is similar. Thank you for the insight.
Great article, agree on all points. Great to celebrate this album. Recently I find I (semi-ritually perhaps) put this on when traveling when I arrive in a new lodging. Something about a full Love Supreme listen through connects my better parts to the new place and the goals at hand. And make no mistake : this is serious devotional music, the quintessence of what religion came from and is supposed to be based on. I have noticed that secularized jazz writers or biographers often downplay or warp the truly overt theistic and religious timbre of this entire album due to their own issues -- I am very happy that Ted has leaned into what seems to me the true spirit of Trane's vision, message and experience. A very rich realm from this point of view.
I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the term Collective Effervescence, but I feel that it would do musicians and artists (and of course beyond just them) well to familiarize themselves with what may be the emergent origin point of spiritual practice and perhaps, to an extent, transcendent experience. It reads as what you’re describing. I don’t think it’s a mere coincidence that devotion tends to be so commonly tied to musical performance, despite having been abstracted or alienated from each other within broader social purview over time. I think Coltrane’s music is a reminder of this being the case, as long as it’s being regarded with complete context.
Thanks, Ted. Nobody does it like you.
I think that in trying times the world actually needs less cynicism, less irony and sarcasm. Coltrane was as earnest as they get! We should be brave enough to follow his example. Dare to be like Trane.
I grew up in a musical household where my Dad played saxophone and his "Man" was John Coltrane. Trane's music was among the first sounds I heard as a baby (I was born in '64) and then growing up, and eventually becoming a sax player too, Trane was/is my man too!
I remember a specific day when my dad sat me down at 6 years old and put on My Favorite Things from the "Selflessness" album (live at Newport), and then I Want To Talk About You from the same album. He asked me what I thought about it. While I couldn't quite comprehend what I had heard, I listened to both in their entirety and felt like the ground shifted under me. I was changed.
I make it a point to listen to A Love Supreme in it's entirety at least once a year, and sometimes more. This is not something one does casually, like putting it on in the background while I do chores. It's an immersive experience, a trip, a ride that I love to take with all my attention and a great pair of headphones. Long Live John Coltrane. Your music lives forever!
“But if you follow those streams back to their source, it’s Coltrane’s maximalism, not Miles’s minimalism that sets them in motion.”
I assume you are aware of what Steve Reich said about the birth of musical Minimalism. That he was in Terry Riley’s original ensemble when Riley was trying to make “In C” but it didn’t work. Reich was a huge Coltrane fan and had listened to Coltrane’s “Africa Brass”which is all in the same key, so he suggested to Terry Riley in order for it to work it needed a “pulse”. So John Coltrane is literally the originator of Minimalism.
Stranger still are the origins of Reich’s tape loops / phase music which happened by accident. While out making a field recording a dove flew by the microphone and when Reich played back the doubled recording it was the first time he heard phasing. He says his entire career/life essentially spawned from that one momentary realization.
And then there’s Reich’s - Tehillim (Psalms) which are literally Psalmic rituals and were usually combined with his piece "Desert Music" as a peace ritual to ward off Nuclear war. Consequently Tehillim (Psalms) is Reich's least recognized, and least performed masterpiece (according to him.)
Then there's all the early electonic musicians, including Brian Eno, The Orb etc who listened to Steve Reich and heard Reich's pulse and also the tape loop doubling Frippertronics etc.
Lastly there’s Andre 3000 who openly said he was listening to a ton of Steve Reich before he created New Blue Sun. So you can definitely say it all goes back to Coltrane, which it does, but that would be missing some literary figures who were doing powerful rituals like you describe right before A Love Supreme, but that’s a story for another day.
I will add my little piece to these beautiful comments. My husband and I had only been dating a week (our first date was on MLK Day in 2016) when I invited him to the Jazz weekend my church was hosting. Dianne Schurr performed Saturday night - heady stuff. He and I were so taken with each other and the music that I invited him back to church the next morning. They performed Paul English’s The Gospel According to John Coltrane, an homage to A Love Supreme, as the service. https://paulenglishmusic.com/the-gospel-according-to-john-coltrane We would marry in that church six months later. So whenever I experience the album and hold the liner notes, it is even thicker with meaning. Thank you, Trane, for reminding us all of a Higher Love. Thank you, Ted, for reminding us too.
A wonderful deep dive on this. I love this type of analysis and thank you so much for another chance to go back and re-listen to this album, yet again.
Thank you so much for your consideration of all of this. No matter how much Coltrane is appreciated, there’s room for more.
Yes! One does “receive” melody. If you’re lucky enough to discover even one, it’s humbling. And if you study spirituality, philosophy, Shakespeare or name goes here, you become a better bass / sax / whatever player. Never subscribed to Gladwell’s line about “talent being the desire to practice”. Doubt it was “practice” for JC. He was receiving and who wouldn’t want to?
But "practice" is ritual, no?
If you replace "practice" with play, it's much more fun and beneficial.
I have always understood “Resolution” here not in musical terms (the resolution of a chord progression) but as a moment of resolve, and hence a starting point. Coltrane “acknowledges” something to begin, such as a spiritual quest. Then he “resolves” to do something, such as undertake that quest. Then he “pursues” something, such as actually going on that quest. Then he sings a sacred song, a “Psalm”. Acknowledgement, resolution, pursuance, psalm: the steps of a quest.
"Crescent" was recorded right around the same time as "A Love Supreme" but doesn't get the amount of press and love of the latter. It seems underrated to me; I love it; it is "Love Supreme's" opposite, serene and meditative rather than urgent and churning. If you haven't listened to "Crescent," I highly recommend it.
My favorite Trane album!
Thanks, Ted, for a profound look at a profound work. But can anyone help me decode the Coltrane Circle? (You can see it by clicking the “Coltrane Circle” hyperlink in the second paragraph after the first embedded video.)
The outer circles depict the chromatic scale repeated across five octaves, with each octave indicated by a numeral inside a box. The star, while a powerful symbol, simply connect each C pitch in each octave. At a glance, this doesn’t seem particularly profound — if he’d written the pitches for four octaves, we’d see a square. With six octaves, we’d get a Star of David, etc. Likewise, the web of lines simply connects every pitch to the center point of the star, which is pretty, but doesn’t tell us much.
But then, there are mysteries, notably the heart-shaped trios of chromatically adjacent notes. These indicate circles of fifths (via ascending fourths) across the five octaves. (Aha — it takes five octaves before the ascending fourths circle back to the original C pitch.) He also indicates the same series of ascending fourths originating from pitches both a half-step above and below the C starting point — that’s three notations of the circle of fifths, staring from pitches B, C, and C#. It’s a graphically striking way of depicting an exceedingly familiar musical concept. Is there world-altering Einsteinian insight here?
Maybe! Do the three-pitch clusters suggest that Coltrane arrived at his chromaticism by slip-sliding between chromatically adjacent keys?
Also, what about the mirror-image numerals (inside the circle near the top of the diagram)? One line ascends from one to seven, and then descends. The other counts down from seven before ascending again. Do these represent the seven pitches of a diatonic scale? And if so, what do they tell us, and how do they relate to the overall diagram?
I’d never encountered this image before you cited it, Ted. So thanks too for that!
How much of that is related to Slomninsky's Thesaurus of Scales?
Thank you for this lovely, deserving honor to Mr. Coltrane and the one and only True and Living GOD. Shalom🛐💯‼️
Wonderful piece. Thank you. A Love Supreme has always felt like a spiritual challenge to me...music that requires the very openness it celebrates. A high-volume, encompassing mindfulness. It's an inspiration for everything I try to do in my own work.
I look at John Coltrane as one of those rare spiritual avatars that come to this world infrequently. Jacob Collier may also be in that category - pure love and musical genius. Thanks for reminding us of this album that I return to often.
The Gary Bartz piece “A Song of Loving/Kindness” is a beautiful tribute to Coltrane. What a legacy Coltrane left.
Please no. The names John Coltrane and Jacob Collier should never appear in the same sentence. Unless that sentence reads: “individuals favourably comparing the talents of John Coltrane and Jacob Collier should be immediately imprisoned”
Music and authoritarianism don’t go well together. Perhaps you have not listened to any of his inspirational work, nor are familiar with the tremendous range of his musical collaborations.
1 of those rare times where an artistic document lives up to all the hype & its reputation! (Used to listen to this before taking off on a trip: hitchhiking or whatever!)