Few albums in the canon of popular music have had the influence, resonance, and endurance of John Coltrane's 1965 classic A Love Supreme-a record that proved jazz was a fitting medium for spiritual exploration and for the expression of the sublime. Bringing the same fresh and engaging approach that characterized his critically acclaimed Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece, Ashley Kahn tells the story of the genesis, creation, and aftermath of this classic recording. Featuring interviews with more than one hundred musicians, producers, friends, and family members; unpublished interviews with Coltrane and bassist Jimmy Garrison; and scores of never-before-seen photographs, A Love Supreme balances biography, cultural context, and musical analysis in a passionate and revealing portrait.
After painstaking preparations with his friend Sammy, Jason enters the big fishing contest and follows a plan to discover where the biggest fish in the pond are hiding.
Recorded by his quartet in a single session in 1964, A Love Supreme is widely considered John Coltrane's magnum opus and one of the greatest jazz albums of all time. In Beyond A Love Supreme, Tony Whyton explores both the musical complexities of A Love Supreme and the album's seminal importance in jazz history. Marking Coltrane's transition from the bebop and hard bop of his earlier recordings to the free jazz style perfected throughout the rest of his career, the album also embodies the deep spirituality that characterized the final years of his life. The titles of the four part suite--"Acknowledgment," "Resolution," "Pursuance," and "Psalm"--along with the poem Coltrane composed for inclusion in the liner notes, which he "recites" instrumentally in "Psalm," reflect the religious aspect of the album, a quality that contributes to its mystique and symbolic importance within the canon of major jazz recordings. But Whyton also shows how A Love Supreme challenges many of the traditional, unreflective assumptions that permeate jazz culture--the binary oppositions between improvisation and composition, black music and white music, live performance and studio recording. He critically examines many of the mythologizing narratives about how the album was conceived and recorded and about what it signifies in terms of the trajectory of Coltrane's personal life. Sifting through the criticism of late Coltrane, Whyton suggests ways of listening to these recordings that go beyond the conventional ideologies of mainstream jazz practice and open the music to a wider range of responses. Filled with fresh insights into one of the most influential recordings in jazz history, Beyond A Love Supreme is an indispensable resource for jazz scholars, jazz musicians, and fans and aficionados at all levels.
Theologian and jazz pianist William Edgar places jazz within the context of the African American experience and explores the work of musicians like Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald, arguing that jazz, which moves from deep lament to inextinguishable joy, deeply resonates with the hope that is ultimately found in the good news of Jesus Christ.
(Artist Books). The All Music Guide calls John Coltrane's A Love Supreme "easily one of the most important records ever made," and Coltrane has referred to it as his "gift to God." This exceptional songbook presents exact note-for-note tenor saxophone transcriptions for every piece on this landmark album. Includes: Acknowledgement (Part I) * Resolution (Part II) * Pursuance (Part III) * Psalm (Part IV).
Told in their own voice, this is the story of two women who took their struggle for marriage equality all the way to the Supreme Court--and won. Kris Perry and Sandy Stier are the lead plaintiffs in the team that sued the state of California to restore marriage equality. By 2008, when Californians voted in Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage, Kris and Sandy had been a couple raising their four sons for almost a decade. Living in Berkeley, they were a modern family, but without the protections of legal marriage. In alternating voices, Love on Trial tells the story of each woman’s journey from her 1960s all-American childhood to the US Supreme Court, sharing tales of growing up in rural America, coming out to bewildered parents, falling in love, and finally becoming a family. From wrangling teenagers and careers to hot flashes at the Supreme Court, this book provides an honest, amusing look at a family that landed in the middle of one of the most important civil rights battles of our era.
The BBC's Jazz Book of the Year for 2008. Few jazz musicians have had the lasting influence or attracted as much scholarly study as John Coltrane. Yet, despite dozens of books, hundreds of articles, and his own recorded legacy, the "facts" about Coltrane's life and work have never been definitely established. Well-known Coltrane biographer and jazz educator Lewis Porter has assembled an international team of scholars to write The John Coltrane Reference, an indispensable guide to the life and music of John Coltrane. The John Coltrane Reference features a a day-by-day chronology, which extends from 1926-1967, detailing Coltrane's early years and every live performance given by Coltrane as either a sideman or leader, and a discography offering full session information from the first year of recordings, 1946, to the last, 1967. The appendices list every film and television appearance, as well as every recorded interview. Richly illustrated with over 250 album covers and photos from the collection of Yasuhiro Fujioka, The John Coltrane Reference will find a place in every major library supporting a jazz studies program, as well as John Coltrane enthusiasts.
John Coltrane's A Love Supreme is widely considered one of the greatest jazz albums of all time. In Beyond A Love Supreme, author Tony Whyton explores both the musical aspects of A Love Supreme, and the album's seminal importance in jazz history, as well as its broader musical and cultural impact.
