With (John) Coltrane 100, AB pays tribute to one of the most influential jazz pioneers of all time with a full six-day programme. Among other highlights, Coltrane’s magnum opus A Love Supreme is brought to life in a breathtaking way by four dancers in a choreography by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Salva Sanchis, and there will be concerts by, amongst others, Shabaka Hutchings (Sons of Kemet / The Comet is Coming), James Brandon Lewis, Ola Tunji, Robin Verheyen (TaxiWars), … All of them ascribe an almost divine status to Coltrane. Ola Tunji’s front woman, Ornella Noulet, says: “Coltrane is a messenger of God; with love and light, he offers us what we so desperately lack in our human condition: a glimpse of eternity.” We asked the performing artists what Coltrane means to them, what their favourite albums are and what impact ‘Trane’ has had on them …
By Kurt Overbergh
1: When did you hear John Coltrane for the first time and what impact did it have on you?
Elin Forkelid: “I was 14 years old and had just started playing the saxophone. I was interested in jazz but a complete novice. I went to the local record shop and dove into the jazz section. There I found some kind of John Coltrane compilation. I bought it and went home to the cd player, first track was Giant Steps. I understood absolutely nothing. My impression was that everyone was just playing lots of notes, with no connection to one another … Did I like it? Absolutely no :-) Still there was something, the sound, the eagerness, the vulnerability, that kept me coming back to Trane. Slowly, it grew on me and I learned to hear the MUSIC, not just the notes.”
Raphael Rogiński: “I first heard about Coltrane when I was very young. I was deeply into the music of the 1960s and 1970s. David Crosby once said in an interview that Coltrane’s music had a profound influence on his harmonic world. That made me curious, so I started exploring it. Back in Warsaw in the 1990s, there were illegal cassette markets where everything was copied and sold unofficially. I bought Africa/Brass. At the time, I was travelling to study at an art school in southern Poland. There are mountains there, and the majesty of those mountains - combined with the opening piece on the album - transported me into another dimension. In some way, it shaped my thinking about symphonic sound in music, even when it comes from a single instrument.”
Robin Verheyen: “There were two recordings with John Coltrane that had a huge impact on me when I was around 13 years old. One was a live recording in Europe with his quartet that I used to play along with and that impressed me with its energy and vibe, the other one was Miles Davis - Kind of Blue (1959) which was one of the first records I bought as a kid. “
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker: “I discovered the music of Coltrane in the mid-80s, about the time right after I discovered Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations. I was not at all accustomed to jazz music, besides Toots Thielemans and some Miles Davis or Take Five by Dave Brubeck. But it was through friends, musicians, that I discovered him. I got closer to that music through this collaboration with Aka Moon, with Fabrizio Cassol, who was a saxophonist, and where I got more in depth into what was so special and incomparable. So it was not love at first sight; it was only later. I must say I've always been fascinated by the cover of that A Love Supreme album, which I find not only an iconic album, but also an iconic photo. So in the 80s I got closer to a number of jazz musicians, at the same time, parallel to my discovery of classical music, all kinds of music. I always had very good dealers, music dealers.”
Salva Sanchis: “First, well, I cannot be sure when the first time I heard Coltrane was, but I'm certain of the first record I bought of his. I know the figure historically, but I never really listened to his music. So I went into a second-hand store and bought the first, cheapest Coltrane record, which was called The Legendary Masters Unissued or Rare 1962–63. It's sort of a strange part of a series of compilations. It's live, it's not a good recording or a good mastering, but I had no reference, and nobody guided me. I just found - I just picked the first Coltrane record I saw. I must have been 20, 21 at most. And my impression was that is was impressive but difficult, noisy, hectic, and not easy listening, all in all. But it was very impressive. So it's not that kind of record that you listen to once and decide: "That's not for me." On the contrary, I kept on going back to it regularly, but finding it difficult to listen to it from the beginning to the end. So I had it in my collection with huge respect, but it took me years to actually know, or dare, to really listen to it.”
Ornella Noulet (Ola Tunji): “I first heard Coltrane when I was 15 years old. I felt very far from being able to understand his language at that time, but I knew I was listening to something very special.”
2: What especially makes John Coltrane so important for you?
Elin Forkelid: “I think the fact that he was always searching, within his music and in his (much too short) life. Also that there is so much passion in every single note he plays. And maybe the fact that it sounds like it wasn’t necessarily easy for him; the way I’ve understood it, the technical part of the playing didn’t come that easy for him. He had to really work for it and put in all he had. That’s where the passion lies I guess. And also, that makes him so very human.”
Raphael Rogiński: “I have always felt drawn to the idea of following one’s own path. Coltrane’s music embodied that spirit from the very beginning. There is also the whole idea of searching for a tonal centre, for the perfect single note - something that is deeply significant in many of the mystical traditions of Central Asia and has always resonated with me. The kind of mysticism that Coltrane embraced without fear is only now returning to the world of music after years of absence. In many ways, I feel closer to some of the more radical figures of that period in jazz - Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders, Henry Threadgill, or simply Alice Coltrane - but it was Coltrane who became a bridge within culture. What is equally important is that this music transcended national and racial divisions. Coltrane, while giving voice to Black musicians and remaining deeply conscious of his own heritage, created a soundtrack for his time that was also universal. We know that he was thinking about and envisioning a kind of “total music,” much like Jimi Hendrix. Sadly, both artists’ lives were cut short before those visions could fully unfold. What they left us, however, are open doors - doors that we, as musicians, can always walk through.”
Robin Verheyen: “His search for something deeper. I was always attracted to his spiritual side and the fact that he kept on evolving as a musician and human being. That’s why most of my favorite Coltrane recordings are from the 60’s.”
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker: “I think, as Peter Hermans explained it, it’s this combination of where :the roots are from: it's bebop, classical music, Indian music and Black music. But especially this combination of an intense, nearly transcendent flow experience that comes through rationality and through a very intuitive approach. A highly virtuosic, kind of obsessive way of searching, and how that combines with a spoken-out spiritual longing or belonging. You know, this “A Love Supreme, to the glory of God”, it makes me think of Sebastian Bach, who wrote Soli Deo Gloria (“Only to the glory of God”). This relationship, in the case of A Love Supreme, this underlying, embedded narrative that is there, the text that John Coltrane wrote, the fusion between the musicians. I think it was a moment of grace in his life, in his career. It was the beginning of his life, his marriage with Alice Coltrane, and of the birth of his son Ravi Coltrane. But it's a moment of blessings, where a number of things with his fellow musicians came together.”
Salva Sanchis: “I don't know what brought me to Coltrane when I started listening to jazz more seriously. I didn't go right away to Coltrane. I listened to a lot of Miles Davis and other people of the period: Cannonball Adderley, Sonny Rollins, ... Then eventually, if you listen enough to Miles and to the first quartets, you end up listening to Coltrane playing in them, and then you just, then there's no way back. You go into Coltrane's records. And it's hard to explain why Coltrane is so important to me. I used to say, "He's not just my favourite musician; he is maybe my favourite artist of all forms of art." And I'm not sure I hold to that nowadays, but in the years where I was studying him and working with his music intensely, that was my feeling. I think Coltrane became important gradually because I also invested a lot in listening to him for hours and hours, for months and years, and I got a lot back from that investment. It's kind of never-ending. Even the pieces I know very well, and that I've listened to literally thousands of times, there are still things every now and then that maybe don't surprise me, but impact me again and again. And there's also something about him being very far away, different, maybe not very far away, but different from my own personality as an artist, in the sense that he's extremely expressive, with no boundaries, whereas I feel that I'm more reserved or minimal in my expression, or more strategic. I find it very impressive how he is so expressive and so technical and so aware and so narratively clear. All at the centre, he kind of has all the qualities. Maybe he's not clean, but with him, cleanness is not a quality that you miss. It just doesn't fit in the spectrum of what he offers, and then it stops being a necessity for me to listen to clean sounds. In fact, the distortion of his playing, the saxophone, is a symptom of the energy and the intention. It's almost like his saxophone couldn't take him, something like that. That's, I guess, why Coltrane has been such a reference to me and why I've always been so impressed by him.”
Ornella Noulet (Ola Tunji): “His music is a refuge for me. When I start to feel empty, I listen to him, and it fills me with everything I need.”
3: What’s your favorite John Coltrane album and why?
Elin Forkelid: “Aaahrg, this is too hard … ! Impossible to pick just one. But one of the first albums that comes to mind is First Meditations (For Quartet), that was recorded in 1965 and released posthumously in 1977 on Impulse! Records. The spirituality on this one always gets me; it has such a peaceful quality to it, yet you can totally sense that he was on to something … he was on his search. The second track, Compassion, is actually the opening tune of my album Plays For Trane released in 2020. So yeah, I’ve listened to that one quite a bit.”
Raphael Rogiński: “I don’t really have a favourite album, although I find his later recordings the most compelling. Coltrane was the kind of artist who created soundtracks rather than simply albums. That’s also how I approach his music when I play it. From the very beginning, I have treated the pieces I chose as if they were film music. Coltrane’s artistic development was remarkably coherent because it was rooted in a person who loved both the world and humanity. To me, that is Coltrane’s greatest legacy.
Robin Verheyen: “That’s hard to answer because there are many. I’ll pick three: Ballads, Crescent and Sun Ship. Ballads (1963, Impulse! Records) cause I love Coltrane’s ballad playing and it’s a quality of him that’s not much talked about. Crescent (1964, Impulse! Records) because of the beauty of all the songs on this album and the great overall vibe. Sun Ship (1971, Impulse! Records) because it’s the classic quartet at his absolute highpoint, intense and very deep music.”
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker: A Love Supreme, but there is another one, Crescent, because of the incredible, I nearly don't dare to say the word, “tenderness” and “elegance”. It doesn't have the feverish feeling of A Love Supreme. It was before A Love Supreme, and it was with the same quartet. It's also quite a dark album, and there is a notion of ballads in it. There is a kind of precision and groove which I like, with very set structures, so it's very close to A Love Supreme and still different.
Salva Sanchis: “The 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings. There is a collection of these recordings where you can hear Greensleeves, several versions of it, India, Impressions, Naima, and so on. I think it's my favourite because there's a balance of all the qualities of Coltrane. It's a mature record, and he died young, but it's not a very early part of his career. He really, I think, is at his prime at that moment. It's also not the more experimental records at the end of his career, which I enjoy a lot, but which are more extreme. I think in 1961, besides the fact that they're beautifully recorded, the songs of this session, he plays really incredibly. And I especially like him playing soprano because, well, kind of for the opposite reason of what I explained earlier. Soprano, I feel, forced him, or allowed him, better said, to play in a more detailed, subtle, precise and melodic manner, without dropping the energy, because it's still Coltrane. But there's something particularly refined about the way he played soprano, and yet it's got this punch and energy which never disappears with him. So the combination and the balance, I find it really fascinating. And I find it particularly interesting to be able to hear different versions of the same song, which is something that he did (he was not the only one people do that) but how he takes something and goes again and again and again at it, squeezing out details and different forms of expression. And I think in these recordings, you can really feel this.”
Ornella Noulet (Ola Tunji): “First Meditations (for quartet), recorded in 1965 and released on Impulse! Records 12 years after his death. The album begins with the Love meditation that always makes me cry, and ends with Serenity, in which you can hear him going to freedom, setting off to a place that would become his final musical and spiritual journey. It’s purely magnificent.”
