A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle

Recorded
Released

In late September and early October 1965, John Coltrane played at the Penthouse in Seattle, Washington. Impulse! Records taped one night of music for the album Live In Seattle, and percussionist Joe Brazil made a private recording of this set, which is one of only two times Coltrane is known to have performed his immortal suite A Love Supreme live. The band is expanded, and so is the music. In addition to pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison, and drummer Elvin Jones, Pharoah Sanders is on tenor sax, Carlos Ward is on alto, and a second bassist, Donald Rafael Garrett, is up there, too. The studio version of ALS is 33 minutes long; this performance runs 75, with each of the four movements radically extended and solo and duo interludes serving as bridges. Between “Acknowledgement” and “Resolution,” we get a short Garrison-Garrett duo; between “Resolution” and “Pursuance,” Jones takes a solo; and between “Pursuance” and “Psalm,” Garrison returns to the spotlight for a 10-minute bass solo. Coltrane himself is playing with the raw freedom he’d explore until the end of his life, but the strength of the music he’d composed is still audible at the eye of this hurricane.

Phil Freeman

Suggestions
Verisimilitude cover

Verisimilitude

Tyshawn Sorey
Sun Awakens cover

Sun Awakens

Six Organs of Admittance
Rosabi EP cover

Rosabi EP

Julianna Barwick
Dream House 78’ 17” cover

Dream House 78’ 17”

Marian Zazeela, La Monte Young, Theatre of Eternal Music
Places of Worship cover

Places of Worship

Arve Henriksen
Chorus cover

Chorus

Holly Herndon
We Are All Famous cover

We Are All Famous

Jim of Seattle