David Dalle
Thursday October 28th, 2021 with David Dalle
John Coltrane's newly discovered "A Love Supreme" recorded live in Seattle. Gidon Kremer performing Sofia Gubaidulina.

Today I am featuring two very different works by two very different composers, John Coltrane and Sofia Gubaidulina. However, both composers held spirituality as central to their works. The first piece we will hear is a newly discovered live recording of "A Love Supreme". Coltrane is known to have only performed "A Love Supreme" three times, in July 1965 at the famed jazz festival in Antibes, France, a performance in October 1965 in a small jazz club in Seattle, and once more at a fundraiser in Brooklyn in 1966. The Antibes performance was recorded and, until very recently, thought to be Coltrane's only live recording of "A Love Supreme". The newly discovered Seattle recording was recorded by Joe Brazil, a saxophonist and jazz teacher in Seattle who was playing daytime sets at the same club Coltrane was performing a weeklong engagement. On the last day, Brazil recorded Coltrane's performance using the house system and Coltrane chose to play his masterpiece. This performance is very different from the live performance in Antibes and the original studio recording, both of which featured his famed classic quartet with McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums. The Seattle performance showed where Coltrane was headed, featuring the classic quartet but augmented by a young Pharoah Sanders and Carlos Ward on tenor and alto sax, and Donald Rafael Garrett on a second bass. This performance is much longer and freer than the studio recording with the four movements of the suite interspersed with four interludes, three of which are solos for the basses and one for the drums. It is ecstatic music making, superb musicians losing themselves in making a joyful sound!