VIA PRESS RELEASE | After nearly six decades, a private recording of a rare, nightclub performance by John Coltrane of his magnum opus, A Love Supreme, is set for commercial release.
Recorded in late 1965 on the culminating evening of a historic week-long run at The Penthouse in Seattle, A Love Supreme: Live In Seattle is a musical revelation of historic importance, capturing Coltrane as he began to expand his classic quartet-adding Pharoah Sanders on second saxophone and Donald Garrett on second bass-and catapulting him into the intense, spiritually focused final phase of his career. Today, you can listen to A Love Supreme, Part IV – Psalm. The full album A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle is for release October 8, on Impulse! Records/UMe.
The significance of A Love Supreme: Live In Seattle is heightened by the fact that Coltrane seldom performed his four-part suite after originally recording it in the studio in 1964. Composed and created as a public declaration of his personal spiritual beliefs and universalist sentiment, it became a bestseller and received a GRAMMY nod the next year.
For more than six decades, it seemed the only recorded public performance of A Love Supreme took place at a French festival at Juan-Les-Pains in July 1965 and was released almost twenty years ago. The tape reels containing this performance from October 1965 sat in the private collection of Seattle saxophonist and educator Joe Brazil, heard by a few fortunate musicians and friends-and largely unknown until now.
A Love Supreme: Live In Seattle is a fascinating and rare performance of the full suite, marked by a looser and more improvisational approach, and a overriding sense of communal participation-much like a Sunday church service; the lineup featured John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders on saxophones, McCoy Tyner on piano, Elvin Jones on drums, and Jimmy Garrison and Donald (Rafael) Garrett on basses. Carlos Ward, then a young saxophonist just getting started on the scene, sat in as well.
TRACKLIST:
A Love Supreme, Pt. 1 – Acknowledgement (Live in Seattle/1965)
Interlude 1 (Live in Seattle/1965)
A Love Supreme, Pt. II – Resolution (Live in Seattle/1965)
Interlude 2 (Live in Seattle/1965)
A Love Supreme, Pt. III – Pursuance (Live in Seattle/1965)
Interlude 3 (Live in Seattle/1965)
Interlude 4 (Live in Seattle/1965)
A Love Supreme, Pt. IV – Psalm (Live in Seattle/1965)
