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Regarded by many jazz purists as the finest jazz session of all time: "A Love Supreme" -- John Coltrane.

As one online reviewer notes:

Arguably the best album John Coltrane ever recorded and consistently mentioned as the greatest album in jazz, "A Love Supreme" lives up to everything that it is discussed as.

Coltrane was riding an artistic high-- enormously successful thanks to 1960's "My Favorite Things", he had quite a bit more latitude than many musicians, a producer who would support his every experiment in Bob Thiele, and a band willing to go wherever he needed (pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones) who he'd developed a rapport with over three years of constantly working together. He'd just recorded the stunning "Crescent" several months earlier and entered the studio in December to record this suite.

The piece, as indicated by the liner notes Coltrane penned, is spiritually informed, a prayer offered to God. The music itself is based on relatively traditional structures, but Coltrane manages to juggle a number of influences and sounds-- shades of Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler all run through it.

The suite is broken in four movements-- "Acknowledgement" is patient and building, revolving around a four-note bass motif-- Trane is exploratory and yearning. After a brief bass solo, this moves into the frantic "Resolution", where Coltrane rails against his theme, turns things over to a oddly meditative yet equally frantic Tyner, and then solos himself in Monkish fashion-- extrapolating off his theme and exploring the sort of spiritual ecstacy that he heard in Ayler.

A brief drum solo signals the transition to "Pursuance"-- Jones is full of energy and explosiveness and this sustains throughout the piece, Coltrane's extended solo is nothing short of stunning, full of fire and energy before suddenly taming down and surrendering to Jones briefly then an astonishing solo by Garrison. Finally, the long exhale after the tension-- "Psalm", finds Coltrane meditative, almost wistful, and informed with a sense of optimistic melancholy. [End of online review excerpt]

"Coltrane has always been my main man, period. His music gets better and better over time. He played so well, so passionately, so sincerely, so perfectly. It's more than the normal nostalgia any individual feels for what influenced him or her at a certain crucial stage and in my case witnessed live during the 1960s. Trane's music is eternal and for the ages. Appreciation of what he did will grow as time goes on, as it does for Duke and Monk and others who were so advanced for their time, for all time.

But why should listeners and musicians, for whom Coltrane is just another legend who has passed on, listen to him in more than a casual way? It is precisely for the honesty and sincerity which Coltrane exuded at all stages of his brief career- these qualities are more important than ever as time goes on. We live in an age of fast communication and overload. It gets harder to discern the real from pretense. With Coltrane, no one can walk away without getting the point. It may not be easy, especially at the beginning, to get past the intensity of his statement, but the well runs deep and can be drawn upon forever. More specifically for musicians who are players, the sound of Trane's horn along with his execution of ideas, feeling of the blues and harmonic depth are models of what we aspire towards. Can there be any greater praise?"

-- David Liebman




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