Coltrane 2022

"My Favorite Things" was released in March 1961 and was the first album on which John Coltrane played soprano saxophone in addition to his tenor saxophone.

With this session, recorded in the summer of 1957, John Coltrane came out from behind the harmonic safety net of a three-horn frontline to focus on his own imposing gifts as an improviser. As the only horn on 'Traneing In', the young tenor giant revels in the spotlight, demonstrating some of the hard-won lessons from his long apprenticeship with Thelonious Monk's group that very summer at New York's Five Spot club.

On September 15, 1957, John Coltrane went into Rudy Van Gelder's studio and created a 40+ minute masterpiece that is considered one of the greatest jazz albums of all time.

For the 2018 opening celebration of the Berklee Institute for Jazz and Gender Justice, Teri Lyne Carrington asked her students to select and perform songs from the famed jazz Real Book - a compilation of lead sheets or scores of jazz standards - written by women composers. When she released there was only one in the entire book, Carrington, a Grammy Award winning virtuoso jazz drummer, composer, inter-disciplinary artist, activist and educator, who has worked tirelessly over the last decade to advocate for inclusivity and raise the voice of women, trans and non-binary people in jazz, set out to shift the narrative.

This is a most unusual LP due to the inclusion of Cecil Taylor on piano. Although Taylor and John Coltrane got along well, trumpeter Kenny Dorham (who is also on this quintet date) hated the avant-garde pianist's playing and was clearly bothered by Taylor's dissonant comping behind his solos.

Fantastic unreleased work from the famous 1961 recordings of John Coltrane at the Village Vanguard – every bit as wonderful as the material that was issued on the core album!

There is no doubting the importance of Gil Scott-Heron’s “Pieces Of A Man” LP.
It was a landmark album with its bold, poetic lyrical content allied to progressive and melodic music, and it saw producer Bob Thiele help Gil and his musical partner Brian Jackson paint the picture they needed to get their message across. Thiele put Gil and Brian together with Ron Carter, Hubert Laws and Bernard Purdie, giving them the musical heft they wanted.