Search - John Coltrane :: First Meditations

The Most Overlooked in the "Classic Quartet" Canon!

08/26/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Somewhere lost between the avant-garde adulation of "Ascension" and the historic praise of "Love Supreme" is this forgotten gem.Maybe it's posthumous release or the dreadful cover art has kept it from wider acceptance. At once raging,tender, and abstract it contains some of the Classic Quartets finest moments. If for no other reason, a must-buy just for the album opener "Love"... Truly one of Trane's most beautiful performances and one of those rare moments in music... when all heaven breaks loose."

Coltrane's Blues

nadav haber | jerusalem Israel | 04/02/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If you agree to Albert Murray's definition of the blues as the music used by African Americans to drive away the blues (who come down like "great big showers of rain") - than this is blues at its best.
Performed in 1965, the year Malcolm X was murdered, when the realities of American life were a little bit too much for everyone, let alone a sensitive soul such as Coltrane's - the music is certainly an attempt to pierce in reality, to reach for a better world.
Coltrane's tenor sound is as strong as ever, and his playing is inspired and driven. Later he would take this direction and further explore it with Rashid Ali, Pharoah Sanders, and his wife Alice. There is a tension here created by the fact that Coltrane was going in a direction that was not totally shared by Tyner and Elvin Jones. It did limit Coltrane if you compare it with his later works - but why compare ?
All track are inspired - and Coltrane makes sure every sound he plays is meaningful. Tyner, Garrison and Jones follow his lead - and whatever differences they in dierction - only make for great music.
This is spiritual music by an exploring musician, a spiritual leader, who plays at the top of his form, concerned only with his own creative process (in the group context).
If you want to enrich the spiritual journey you are taking - try it - as it certainly enriched mine."

Amazing - one of Trane's best

07/12/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The fact that an album like this wasn't released until several years after Coltrane's death speaks volumes about his productivity. To my knowledge, this 1965 set was the final studio recording by the Coltrane/Tyner/Jones/Garrison quartet, widely regarded as one of the greatest groups in all of jazz history."First Meditations" is a quartet version of Coltrane's "Meditations" suite. The better-known sextet version with Pharoah Sanders and Rasheed Ali is ferociously intense and dissonant, enough to scare a Coltrane novice away for good. The quartet version on this recording is nearly as impassioned, but thoroughly enjoyable to any fan of the classic quartet. If you enjoy "A Love Supreme", check this one out - more than any other recording, "First Meditations" is the sequel."