JOHN COLTRANE - Offering: Live At Temple University... https://youtube/watch?v=pZQAwahDL8A John Coltrane – Offering: Live at Temple University Release Date: September 23, 2014 Recorded November 11, 1966 Mitten Hall, Temple University Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Available as Deluxe 2-CD digi-pack or Deluxe 2-LP Limited Edition pressing of 2,000: resonancerecords.org/relea... “A ninety-minute session of sustained intensity: experimental, frenzied at times, and deeply spiritual… Coltrane was pointing the way forward for generations of players to come, pushing the music to exhilarating, spiritual heights that caught most by surprise. In 1966, that wasn’t what jazz performances were about—not yet.” – Ashley Kahn, jazz journalist & historian Deluxe 2-CD Digi-Pack: - 24 page booklet with extensive liner notes by jazz journalist & historian, Ashley Kahn - Previously unpublished photographs by author & historian Frank Kofsky. 2-LP Limited Edition pressing of 2,000: - 180-gram vinyl pressed on 12” LP’s at 33 1/3 RPM by Record Technology Incorporated (R.T.I.) - Mastered by Bernie Grundman - Special hand-numbered gatefold - Contains postcards featuring previously unpublished photos of John Coltrane by author & historian, Frank Kofsky. Featured Artists: John Coltrane – soprano & tenor saxophones, flute & vocals Pharoah Sanders – tenor saxophone & piccolo Alice Coltrane – piano Sonny Johnson – bass Rashied Ali – drums Additional musicians include: Steve Knoblauch, Arnold Joyner – alto saxophone Umar Ali, Algie DeWitt, Robert Kenyatta - percussion By ROBERT BUSH, Published: August 20, 2014 | John Coltrane: Offering: Live At Temple University Discovering unheard John Coltrane material is the Holy Grail for serious music devotees, and the imminent release (Sept.23,2014) of a 1966 live date in the form of Offering: Live at Temple University on the Impulse! label (in conjunction with Resonance Records and Universal Music) to join The Olatunji Concert and One Down, One Up Live at the Half Note in the Coltrane archive is good news, indeed, for those wishing to explore the iconic saxophonists later years. Adding significantly to the first-class feel of this production is the inclusion of a 23-page liner booklet written by the always perceptive Ashley Kahn. Offering is a flat-out fascinating document. The band, (with the exception of Sonny Johnson subbing for bassist Jimmy Garrison) is the familiar 1966 unit comprised of Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane, and Rashied Ali. Additionally, saxophonists Arnold Joyner and Steve Knoblauch join the group, as do percussionists Umar Ali, Algie DeWitt, Robert Kenyatta, and Charles Brown. The performance starts before the tape begins rolling, so the opening Naima, is slightly clipped, but two things are immediately evident: first that Trane is in absolute peak form—his improvising skills have never been sharper; second: this is not the Naima from Giant Steps or even Live at the Village Vanguard Again. It is almost impossible to pick out more than a few snatches of the original melody, and stripped of its harmonic benchmarks, Coltranes acidic rhapsody cuts through the elliptical accompaniment with exuberant ferocity—muscular in all registers. Alices solo is crowded with effusive melodic information—delivered in a strangely virtuosic fashion. Imagine Oscar Peterson on LSD and you get the idea. Johnsons contribution is more of a theory than an audible reality, but the lawn-sprinkler hi-hat and kick-drum battery of Ali is clearly evident. The 26-minute-long version of Crescent, has evolved from the lonely melancholy of its original iteration into a darker, edgier performance at Temple University. Although he hews far closer to the melody—this Crescent is looser and freer and imbued with an agitation that becomes more profound when the four percussionists emerge from nowhere. Sanders, in his first appearance, rips the tune from its moorings with harsh screams, squeals, and gurgling multiphonics —effectively creating an alternate reality that threatens to permanently raise the hair from the back of the listeners neck. Over the obstreperous percussion, Alice churns out a fierce melodic cascade that doesnt really reference the changes, per se, but burns with a kinetic flow reminiscent of Cecil Taylor, one of her husbands favorites. Just as she locks into a dialog with the multiple drummers, there is the sudden inclusion of apparently uninvited alto saxophonist Arnold Joyner—who actually straddles the divide between the extremes of Coltrane and Sanders quite well with coruscating squiggles and shrieking repetitions. Coltrane returns, paraphrasing the melody and extrapolating it with a high-energy sermon that combines velocity and speaking-in-tongues into a tour-de-force that ends quite abruptly. Leo, opens disc-2 with its violent, fragmented theme, and Sanders hits the gates first with sandblasted wails and whinnies. Five minutes into Sanders brutal novella, Trane begins vocalizing cell-like structures that mirror his own saxophone ideas. Its a new expression (much different from the chants on A Love Supreme) that he will return to several times in this concert. Despite the intense agony and ecstasy inherent in the Sanders exposition—Leo really belongs to Ali. Above the percolating backdrop of congas, bata-drum and cowbell, Alis five minute drum solo is a muscular fusillade that bristles with kinetic energy and kaleidoscopic shifts in direction. In stark relief of the lengthier material on this recording (21 minutes is the average duration on the four other compositions) the title track clocks in at a mere 4:19. Offering alternates between the pensive and the volcanic, with a heavy emphasis on the former in the elegiac form of the rubato ballad Coltrane had long since perfected. That leaves the iconic My Favorite Things, as the evenings benediction. Johnson can finally be heard via his a cappella introduction (which in 1966, had also served as a prime feature for the absent Garrison.) Johnsons pizzicato is more aggressive—at times he sounds like hes trying to rip the strings off the instrument—nonetheless, its an impressive statement, and its a pity that so little has been heard from him in the intervening years. Trane is off to the races on the straight horn, elucidating the familiar themes but without much in the way of support. Alice is way off in the background (there appears to be just one operating microphone in this recording—which was done at the student radio station) and with Johnson once again invisible in the mix—its just Coltrane and the drummers. When its Alices turn to solo, however, she is much more prominent, and her left hand sounds a lot like what her predecessor, McCoy Tyner was known for: alternating between quartal harmony and thrashing fifths; balanced with quicksilver right-hand runs, its one of the most powerful and illuminative episodes in her recorded output, and one can only wish it had been captured in higher-fidelity. Again, an unfamiliar horn wafts in—this time its 18-year-old college student Steve Knoblauch, at Tranes invitation, on alto. Knoblauch solos briefly, with an intelligent New Thing awareness before Coltrane returns, on fire, with eight minutes of furious soprano whiplash that seems to recapitulate and expand every inspired idea he ever draped across the skeletal structure of this forever transformed show-tune . For those inclined to dismiss late-period Trane as an unfortunate derailment, Offering probably wont induce many conversions. But for those who are willing to go there—this recording represents a new opportunity to hear the master at the absolute height of his powers reaching into his personal vortex and showering sparks into our darkness. Track Listing: (Disc 1) Naima; Crescent. (Disc 2) Leo; Offering; My Favorite Things Personnel: John Coltrane: tenor and soprano saxophone, flute, vocals; Pharoah Sanders: tenor saxophone, piccolo; Alice Coltrane: piano; Sonny Johnson: bass; Rashied Ali: drums; Arnold Joyner: alto sax; Steve Knoblauch: alto sax; Umar Ali: conga; Robert Kenyatta: conga; Charles Brown: conga; Algie DeWitt: bata drum. Record Label: Impulse!
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 10:19:08 +0000
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