First Meditations (For Quartet)

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First Meditations (For Quartet)
Studio album by John Coltrane

Publication
(s)

1977

Label (s) Impulses!

Format (s)

LP, CD

Genre (s)

jazz

Title (number)

5

running time

52:08

occupation

production

Bob Thiele

Studio (s)

Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs , New Jersey

chronology
The Other Village Vanguard Tapes
(1977) 		First Meditations (For Quartet) Feelin 'Good - The Mastery Of John Coltrane, Vol. I
(1978)

First Meditations (For Quartet) is a jazz album by John Coltrane that was recorded on September 2, 1965. It contains the first version of Coltrane's Meditation Suite ; the session was posthumously in 1977 on Impulse! Records released. This is the final recording of the classic John Coltrane Quartet .

The album

After returning from a European tour and a few days after the recordings for the also posthumous album Sun Ship , John Coltrane went back to the studio on September 2, 1965 to record a religiously inspired suite . Coltrane then recorded the compositional material used a second time for his (final) meditation version on November 23, 1965 (Impulse! AS 9110), albeit with a different formation. While he had played with his "classic quartet" ( McCoy Tyner , piano, Jimmy Garrison , bass, and Elvin Jones , drums) at the September session , he expanded his band with Pharoah Sanders and Rashied Ali for the 1966 album Meditations to the sextet . First meditations and meditations mark the transition from his previous quartet formation to the more open playing forms of Coltrane's late phase and his final break with the Bop idiom.

In Filtgen / Auserbauer's view, the suite “ties in with the themes and hymn-like depiction of the deep religiosity of John Coltrane, which has been the focus of his work since A Love Supreme ”. Coltrane's choice of the album title Meditations is obviously the result of deep deliberations; the spiritual undertones reflect the religious self-examination from which this music draws its sources. When John Coltrane was asked by Nat Hentoff to what extent this expression of religious consciousness bound him on his album A Love Supreme , the saxophonist replied:

" Once you become aware of this force for unity, you can't ever forget it. It becomes part of everything you do. In that respect, this is an extension of A Love Supreme since my conception of that force keeps changing shape. My goal in meditating on this through music, however, remains the same. And that is to uplift people, as much as I can. "

Both versions of the suite contain the sentences Love, Compassion, Consequences and Serenity . When Coltrane recorded the suite for the second time, he added the introduction, The Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost , followed by Compassion, Love, Consequences and Serenity . The album First Meditations begins with the "swelling line" of Love ; “There is an encounter of energy outside of the tempo [playing] freedom from Love to the fixed rhythms of the [following] waltz Compassion ”.

Love is the simple meditative recitation of a song-like rhythmic theme that increases in intensity. Coltrane's increasingly varied and energetic repetitions of the motivic phrases increase with the support of the rhythm section before you return to a meditative mood and the movement leads to a motif that is reminiscent of the opening theme of Ascension . After three minutes, McCoy Tyner has his solo; at 4:42 Coltrane begins with a coda . After eight minutes the track ends with a decrescendo drum roll.

Medium-tempo compassion is a spiritual- like theme; between Coltrane's first (2: 00–3: 57) and second solo (6: 30–8: 35), pianist Tyner improvises, accompanied by Jones on the mallets. A drum roll by Elvin Jones again forms the transition to the faster Joy theme. With Consequences , a simple two- or three-note theme, the intensity increases. At 2:36, Coltrane finishes his solo; Tyner plays repetitive riff characters . Coltrane first introduces the calm Serenity motif; Garrison plays arco phrases on it, Tyner adds shimmering arpeggios . John Coltrane returns at 3:40; Jones and the saxophonist then begin a calm end to the movement.

The titles

  • John Coltrane Quartet - First Meditations (Impulse ASD 9332)
  1. Love - 8:04
  2. Compassion - 9:30
  3. Joy - 8:49
  4. Consequences - 7:21
  5. Serenity - 6:10

All compositions are by John Coltrane

Editorial notes

In the liner notes of the first LP edition in 1977, David Wild speculates that the publication was probably not rejected during Coltrane's lifetime, but simply forgotten in view of the other music composed in the summer of 1965 and suppressed by the urgency of the later, stylistically changed statements.

The 1992 CD edition contained another and longer take by Joy , which was recorded twenty days later during a tour of the West Coast at Coast Recorders Studio in San Francisco. This version - with numerous overdubs - was first published in 1970 ( Infinity , Impulse AS 9225). The unchanged version of the recording first appeared in 1978 on the Coltrane compilation Feelin 'Good - The Mastery of John Coltrane, Vol. 1 .

Reception of the album

Elvin Jones (1977)

Shortly after its release, the album rose to # 37 on the American jazz charts in February 1978.

Richard Cook and Brian Morton gave the album the highest rating in the Penguin Guide to Jazz and said, "for reasons of beauty", the first version of the two versions from September 1965 should be preferred, although this music no longer represents what Coltrane with this group wanted to represent and he should then try out Ascension with his album .

Scott Yanow awarded the album four stars in Allmusic and wrote:

" Coltrane (sticking here exclusively to tenor) plays passionately, alternating ferocious explorations with more lyrical sections. "

David Wild said in the 1977 Liner Notes that the rediscovery of First Meditations "gave us back the suite in its original beauty in a more conventional format that Coltrane soon sacrificed". The session reveals not only powerful solos and another look at a group whose work has changed the direction of art, but also an alternating view of one of Coltrane's larger compositions. This view is in some respects superior to that of the first published version. The five parts of the suite by Firsts Mediations are more perceptible as compositions in the performance by the quartet, and Coltrane's intentions as a composer are also more recognizable in this less overloaded context.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Quoted from Cook / Morton, 2002, p. 321 f.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f David Wild, Original Liner Notes 1977
  3. ^ A b Leonard Brown: John Coltrane and Black America's Quest for Freedom: Spirituality and the Music. Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 83
  4. ↑ Michael Cuscuna , Liner Notes of the 1992 CD edition
  5. ^ Billboard February 11, 1978
  6. ↑ Scott Yanow : Review of the album at Allmusic (English). Retrieved August 24, 2012.