Ascension: Coltrane Consciousness Radio

01/05/2024

Looking back at the moment when one of our greatest jazzmen raised the stakes for everyone who came after

01/04/2024

Wonderful news!

By Clive Young. The home—and home studio—of jazz legend John Coltrane was nearly demolished; now a $1.75m grant will bring both back to life.

12/24/2023

A Christmas tradition! Enjoy!

and "When The Saints Go Marching In"Continental CR-1001

09/24/2023

Linked from my other classic jazz radio program…

THIS IS the first of what will be a series of many detailed essays exploring the beloved album A Love Supreme. This recording is very important to me personally. My book John Coltrane: His Life and Music began with A Love Supreme. One day in 1978, re-listening to the album after hearing it a number....

09/23/2023

Today, the 24-hr Coltrane birthday broadcast on WKCR-FM

09/12/2023

Donate to keep jazz music alive and well in Louisville!

I’m ready to support Louisville Jazz Society on September 14, 2023 during Give For Good Louisville. Learn more about Louisville Jazz Society and all the other organizations participating in Give For Good Louisville.

08/27/2023

Happy Birthday to the President…Lester Young (8/27/1909 in Woodville, MS)

Young’s tone was a striking departure from the accepted full-bodied, dark, heavy variety, with its quick vibrato, because his was light in weight, colour, and texture, with a slow vibrato. The swinging, rhythmic feeling in his improvisations was far more relaxed and graceful than that usually heard in the work of others during the 1930s. His lines were streamlined, logical, and refreshingly melodic.
The impact of his style was so broad that he has been cited as a favourite by such diverse modern jazz figures as Charlie Parker, Stan Getz, and John Coltrane. Much of the West Coast “cool” style was a direct product of Lester Young’s approach, many saxophonists playing his lines note for note in their own performances.
He was so important that singer Billie Holiday called him president of tenor saxophonists, and he was known thereafter as Pres (or Prez). ❤️🎷❤️

07/20/2023

❤️🎷❤️

Grace Cathedral in SF will host the St. John Coltrane Church congregation on July 21 for...

07/19/2023

Tune in this Friday morning for a journey through Coltrane’s live recordings!

Listen on WXOX (97.1 fm) or artxfm.com

04/16/2023

Saxophone magus John Coltrane closed his Atlantic account with ‘Olé Coltrane’, a key album that unlocked his later musical explorations.

12/12/2022

Is the latest posthumous addition to his canon released today the Holy Grail?

12/07/2022

In 1958 trumpeter Miles Davis brought a new pianist named Bill Evans into his sextet who stayed only a few months, but whose influence helped spark one of the most artistically notable and commercially successful albums in the history of jazz.

09/13/2022

❤️🎷❤️

Just on the horizon is our annual John Coltrane birthday broadcast. This September 23rd, tune in to wkcr.org for a full 24-hours of nonstop Coltrane! We’ll see you then for a day of jazz, sax, and celebration.

04/21/2022

Regarded as one of the most important figures in jazz, tributes are planned across the world to honor the legacy of bassist, bandleader and pioneer Charles Mingus.

02/28/2022

An outer-body experience.

12/04/2021

A great read. Enjoy. ❤️

The intensity of the jazz legend’s music has always inspired passion, but in the 1960s, one group of devotees was so stirred they founded a church in his name.

12/04/2021

Mosaic Records was founded, nearly forty years ago, with the mission of reissuing great jazz recordings in a way that best showcases a particular artist or label. The reissues are prepared from the best source material that can be found, with skillful audio restoration to minimize noise while...

11/21/2021

Happy Birthday to Coleman Hawkins!

As one of the first renowned jazz tenor saxophonists, Hawkins helped to establish the instrument as essential to the genre, especially for soloists. Hawkins' warm tone and signature vibrato, along with his melodic and technical virtuosity, made him a pivotal influence on future generations of jazz pioneers.

Hawkins first broke his name during a gig with Mamie Smith's Jazz Hounds in 1921. He toured with them until 1923, when he moved to New York and joined Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra. During his run with Henderson, he rapidly defined his sound as a prominent soloist, and continued to do so until the early 1930s. In 1934 he traveled to London to play with Jack Hylton’s band and ended up touring Europe as a soloist until 1939. Upon returning to the States, he left his mark on the swing era with his arguably definitive recording of “Body and Soul.” Afterwards, he went on to play with many jazz giants; in the early 1940s he regularly performed live with Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Oscar Pettiford, and Max Roach, and in 1944, he led a group with Dizzy Gillespie and Max Roach on what is considered the first bebop recording. After 1948, Hawkins mainly traveled back and forth between Europe and New York, recording with artists like Monk and Roach, as well as Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he resumed a more traditional approach, playing festivals with the likes of Red Allen and Roy Eldridge. Hawkins passed away on May 19, 1969 at the age of 64.

11/19/2021

John Coltrane’s Civil Rights elegy “Alabama” first appeared on Live at Birdland (1964), though it was recorded in Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey on November 18, 1963 – three months after the dramatic events surrounding the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing of September 15, ...

11/16/2021

Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road' did for literature what Charlie Parker and John Coltrane did for jazz, whipping it up into brave new shapes and forms that challenged the norm and set a generation in motion, writes Keith Shadwick

11/10/2021

The iconic album is the first jazz LP of the 1960s to achieve platinum certification

11/07/2021

Part-Time Audiophile - Jazz Files A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle | Jazz Files a love supreme live in seattle coltrane

11/07/2021

Yes!

The albums highlighted below are benchmarks in the history of jazz on record and if you are discovering jazz for the first time then you've just found the perfect place to start

10/30/2021

The jazz world is heralding A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle, a document of John Coltrane performing his masterpiece in 1965. But the story is bigger than Trane: It involves his friend who recorded it, Joe Brazil — and a dogged archivist trying to bring his story into the light.

10/19/2021

Charlie Parker may have died aged just 34 on on 12 March 1955, but his totemic musical language of ‘bebop’ has remained a foundational element of the vernacular of jazz

10/16/2021

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Less than a month after Kind of Blue was recorded in 1959, John Coltrane first entered the studio to make what in many ways was that mighty album’s equal: Giant Steps. Stuart Nicholson tells the full story of one of the greatest albums in jazz history

10/12/2021

🎺❤️

In his short but eventful life, trumpeter Lee Morgan rocketed to the highest echelons of jazz in double-quick time – playing with and Art Blakey as a teenager and recording with John Coltrane. Stuart Nicholson dives deep into the difficult truths behind this most mercurial of jazz musicians and as...

10/10/2021

🔥🔥🔥

A rare live performance of John Coltrane’s masterpiece, "A Love Supreme," was thought to be lost to history. But it wasn’t.

10/08/2021

Tune in tomorrow morning for the finest in classic jazz.
https://www.coltraneconsciousness.com

10/08/2021

At a press conference in Tokyo in July 1966, a Japanese jazz critic asked John Coltrane what he would like to be in ten years. “I would like to be a