John Coltrane CDs:
Ascension
/
Ballads
/
Best of John
Coltrane /
Impressions
/
My Favorite Things /
Selflessness /
A Love Supreme /
Giant Steps
Meditations
Kulu Se Mama /
Interstellar
Space /
The Complete Africa/Brass Sessions /
Stellar Regions /
Expression
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Breathing Low & Steady
By
Rudolph Lewis
The white moon waxes
a purple night dome
of heaven, turning
on its back,
toward the horizon,
holding water—heavily
like a bitch
her unborn litter
in the air dry flies
cry for rain
drops falling
like spears
on florid leaves,
earth’s beauty
thinning
coming down wet
with age to bared limbs
& gray skies
Life always strips
down in season
to truths
& our favorite things—
solitude,
the uneasiness
of desire,
longing for a touch
just out of reach
piano keys riffing right
in the back of a blue room
heart strings thumping,
skipping beats
sand on cymbals
tapping, dancing on
high wires over
the abyss,
flying melodies
of Trane’s soprano sax
Early morning holds its breath
in expectation of more yet to come
3 November 2003
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John Coltrane,
"Alabama" / Kalamu
ya Salaam, "Alabama" /
A Love Supreme
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery
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Africa Makes Some Noise—Documentary on contemporary music from
Africa
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The transcendent power of music has long been recognized as a
vehicle for spiritual practice and a path to spiritual fulfillment
and enlightenment. Spiritual music, a universally powerful form of
prayer, has for millennia provided human beings with a sense of the
greater spiritual universe. Chanting forms part of many religious
rituals, and diverse spiritual traditions consider music as a means
of opening the individual to spiritual experience. I
n this episode of Global
Spirit, host Phil Cousineau explores the transcendent qualities of
spiritual and sacred music with guests Rev. Alan Jones and
Grammy-award-winning singer and member of the Native American
Onondaga tribe Joanne Shenandoah. Experience the power of
liturgical musical performances in Latin from Grace Cathedral in San
Francisco (where the Rev. Jones serves as Dean) and witness
powerful, live studio performances by Joanne Shenandoah and her
daughter.
This episode also includes a
hauntingly moving, seven-minute sequence from Peter Brook’s film,
Meetings with Remarkable Men, in which the young mystic
Gurdjieff learns the power of sacred sound as it resonates from the
Afghan mountaintops.—Music,
Sound and the Sacred
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Among the
many forms in which the human spirit has tried to express its innermost
yearnings and perceptions, music is perhaps the most universal. It
symbolizes the yearnings for harmony, with oneself and with others, with
nature and with the spiritual and sacred within us and around us. There
is something in music that transcends and unites. This is evident in the
sacred music of every community—music that expresses the universal
yearning that is shared by people all over the globe.—His
Holiness the Dalai Lama
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John Coltrane A
Love Supreme
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John Coltrane A
Love Supreme /
My Favorite Things—John Coltrane
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My Favorite Things is a
1961 jazz album by John Coltrane. It is considered by
many jazz critics and listeners to be a highly
significant and historic recording. It was the first
session recorded by Coltrane on the Atlantic label, the
first to introduce his new quartet featuring McCoy Tyner
(Piano), Elvin Jones (Drums) and Steve Davis (Bass) -
neither Jimmy Garrison nor Reggie Workman featured as
yet.
It is classed as another album in which Coltrane made a
break free of bop, introducing complex harmonic
reworkings of such songs as "My Favorite Things", and
"But Not for Me." Additionally, at a time when the
soprano saxophone was considered obsolete, it
demonstrated Coltrane's further investigation of the
instrument's capabilities in a jazz idiom.
The standard “Summertime” is notable for its upbeat,
searching feel, a demonstration of Coltrane's “sheets of
sound,” a stark antithesis to Miles Davis's melancholy,
lyrical version on Porgy and Bess. "But Not For Me" is
reharmonised using the famous Coltrane changes, and
features an extended coda over a repeated ii-V-I-vi
progression.
The title track is a
modal rendition of the Richard Rodgers/Oscar
Hammerstein's seminal song “My Favorite Things” from
The Sound of Music. The melody is heard numerous
times throughout the almost 14-minute version, and
instead of soloing over the written chord changes, both
Tyner and Coltrane taking extended solos over vamps of
the two tonic chords, E minor and E major. Tyner's solo
is famous for being extremely chordal and rhythmic, as
opposed to developing melodies. In the documentary
The World According to John Coltrane, narrator Ed
Wheeler remarks: “In 1960, Coltrane left Miles [Davis]
and formed his own quartet to further explore modal
playing, freer directions, and a growing Indian
influence. They transformed ‘My Favorite Things’, the
cheerful populist song from The Sound of Music,
into a hypnotic eastern dervish dance. The recording was
a hit and became Coltrane's most requested tune—an
abridged broad public acceptance.”
A cover of the title track appeared on the OutKast album
The Love Below.
