Demo · John Coltrane
Examples
Each theme has a site dedicated to the musician it is named after.
Pages
What a visitor can open on this site.
Theme
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Day or night
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The Story
John Coltrane (1926–1967) was a saxophonist and composer. He was born in Hamlet, North Carolina, took up the saxophone in Philadelphia, and served in the Navy in Hawaii in 1945 and 1946 before coming home to play in the city’s bands.
He joined Miles Davis’s quintet in 1955 and left it in April 1960. In 1957, after a spiritual awakening that ended his heroin addiction, he played the Five Spot with Thelonious Monk and recorded Blue Train. Giant Steps followed in 1959, and on My Favorite Things he took up the soprano saxophone.
His own quartet, with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones, played from the early 1960s, and from 1961 on Impulse! Records. He wrote A Love Supreme in the summer of 1964 at his house in Dix Hills, on Long Island, and recorded it in one session in December: four parts, Acknowledgement, Resolution, Pursuance and Psalm.
In June 1965 he recorded Ascension with ten other players. That July the quartet played the festival at Antibes and the Salle Pleyel in Paris, and at Antibes performed A Love Supreme in full; a recording of that night survives. He died of liver cancer in 1967, at forty.
This is a demo site, a tribute built to show what a musician’s page on TJP can hold. Its dates are the demo’s own.
Records
Coming Up
- Tickets: A Love Supreme, in four parts (opens in a new tab)
A Love Supreme, in four parts
Village Vanguard, New York
Sunday 25 OCT 2026
- Tickets: Ascension, for eleven players (opens in a new tab)
Ascension, for eleven players
Pinède Gould, Juan-les-Pins
Sunday 15 NOV 2026
- Tickets: The quartet, a Paris evening (opens in a new tab)
The quartet, a Paris evening
Salle Pleyel, Paris
Sunday 6 DEC 2026
- Tickets: Giant Steps, on the lawn (opens in a new tab)
Giant Steps, on the lawn
Fort Adams State Park, Newport
Friday 1 JAN 2027
On Film
Liner Notes
My goal is to live the truly religious life and express it in my music. If you live it, when you play there’s no problem because the music is just part of the whole thing. To be a musician is really something. It goes very, very deep. My music is the spiritual expression of what I am — my faith, my knowledge, my being.
John [Coltrane] was like a visitor to this planet. He came in peace and he left in peace; but during his time here, he kept trying to reach new levels of awareness, of peace, of spirituality.
There was Coltrane with the lights behind him, beatified. He held out his arms and took me in and I wept like a child.
In short, [Coltrane’s] tone is beautiful because it is functional. In other words, it is always involved in saying something.
The main thing a musician would like to do is to give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows of and senses in the universe.
Projects
- The QuartetMcCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones: the group that recorded Crescent and A Love Supreme, and played Antibes and Paris in the summer of 1965.(opens in a new tab)
- AscensionEleven players (five saxophones, two trumpets, piano, two basses and drums) in one piece of almost forty minutes, recorded on 28 June 1965.(opens in a new tab)
- AmsterdamThe Edison Award for Giant Steps, handed over on the stage of the Concertgebouw on 20 November 1961, and a return two years later.(opens in a new tab)
- PhiladelphiaThe rowhouse at 1511 North 33rd Street, where he lived from 1952 to 1958 and which stayed a second home for the rest of his life.(opens in a new tab)
Photographs
Elsewhere
Book the quartet, or eleven
Concert halls, festivals, clubs and churches. The quartet travels with its own bass; Ascension asks for a wide stage and a long soundcheck. Tell us the room, the date and the sound you want, and we answer within the week.