Saxophonist Ravi Coltrane pays tribute to legendary parents, tenor titan Pharoah Sanders
Saxophonist Ravi Coltrane celebrates the music of his parents -- saxophone giant John Coltrane and harpist/piano player Alice Coltrane -- and their late collaborator and his mentor Pharoah Sanders during a four-night SFJAZZ residency.
One of the most influential horn players to emerge during the '50s, the initially bebop-inspired John Coltrane progressed from early work with Dizzy Gillespie and Johnny Hodges to a pair of storied collaborations, first playing with trumpet great Miles Davis mid-decade in what would later be referred to as his "First Great Quintet." The saxophonist would be temporarily sidelined by a debilitating heroin addiction, but not before he contributed to a string of storied Davis albums including Cookin', Relaxin', Workin', and Steamin' on the Prestige label.
Coltrane kicked his habit by 1957 and began working with iconoclastic pianist Thelonious Monk in addition to recording his first albums as a leader, including the seminal Blue Note Records effort Blue Train. Soon afterwards, he rejoined Davis in his group to contribute to the watershed jazz album Kind of Blue, one of the most influential and revered recordings of the era.
After an initial run with Atlantic Records -- including more landmark albums as a leader including Giant Steps and the commercial and critical hit My Favorite Things that introduced the soprano sax to Coltrane's arsenal, the saxophonist would become the cornerstone of the Impulse! Records label.
By then working with his legendary quartet featuring volcanic drummer Elvin Jones and innovative pianist McCoy Tyner, Coltrane released a series of albums ranging from traditional jazz standards (Ballads, Duke Ellington and John Coltrane with the iconic big-band leader) to more exploratory experiments like his spiritual hymn A Love Supreme and the collective improvisation opus Ascension.
Up until his untimely death in 1967 from liver cancer at age 40, Coltrane produced an inspiring string of recordings -- many that weren't released until years after his passing -- that pushed jazz into a new direction. His wife Alice -- who had become the pianist in his group in early 1966 and also played harp -- became not only the steward to her husband's recorded legacy, but established herself as visionary artist in her own right.
Recording as a leader for Impulse Records, Alice Coltrane moved from the more traditional jazz of her 1965 debut A Monastic Trio to mine similar territory as her husband with a string of cosmic/spiritual jazz releases with members of his band including saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders, drummer Rasheid Ali and bassist Jimmy Garrison as well as other jazz luminaries like bassists Ron Carter and Charlie Haden and saxophonist Joe Henderson. Beginning with her groundbreaking 1970 album Journey to Satchidananda, Coltrane introduced Indian instrumentation and influences that would mark her music for the rest of her career.
Coltrane would add organ to her arsenal of instruments on Universal Consciousness the following year while embracing increasingly complex orchestral arrangements. She would later collaborate with John Coltrane devotee Carlos Santana and record a trio of records for Warner Bros. before moving away from secular life and becoming the spiritual director for a Vedantic ashram in Southern California.
However, she continued to record hypnotic spiritual music built around chanting, percussion, organ and synthesizer through the 1980s and '90s that were sold on cassette at the ashram. Coltrane returned to recording jazz and performing live in the early 2000s. She recorded and released Translinear Light with Ravi (who also produced the album) and his brother Oran in 2004, her first commercial release in over a quarter century. Two years later, she played a trio of concerts to mark what would have been her husband's 80th birthday, including one for the SF Jazz Festival with Ravi, Haden and drummer Roy Haynes. Sadly in the midst of renewed interest in her music, Alice Coltrane died of respiratory failure the following year at age 69.
Some of her religious recordings would eventually be compiled and released by the Luaka Bop label in 2017. The material featured on World Spirituality Classics 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda would expand the audience for some of her underappreciated later work.
Recent years have seen a surge of interest in both of Ravi's parents between the 2017 documentary film Chasing Trane and a string of new, previously unreleased material: the studio recordings Blue World and Both Directions at Once for John Coltrane, as well as a lost live recording of "A Love Supreme" featuring his classic quartet augmented by Sanders, second bassist Donald Garrett and alto saxophonist Carlos Ward that was issued in 2021, while Kirtan: Turiya Sings adds to Alice Coltrane's legacy with it's solo voice and organ recordings from the early 1980s. Most of her discography from the '70s has been repressed on vinyl with Impulse recently releasing a stunning previously unheard live recording from a 1971 Carnegie Hall concert that includes Sanders, fellow sax icon Archie Shepp and dueling drummers drummers Ed Blackwell and Clifford Jarvis.
For his part, Ravi Coltrane studied music at the California Institute of the Arts before embarking on a lengthy career as a sideman, touring with his father's drummer Elvin Jones in his group and playing with trumpeter Wallace Roney before an extended stint with alto saxophonist and M-Base Collective founder Steve Coleman. He also played with a wide range of luminaries including keyboard giants Geri Allen, Kenny Barron, McCoy Tyner, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock, Bay Area Latin guitar hero Carlos Santana, bassist Stanley Clarke, and sax greats Sanders and Branford Marsalis. He wouldn't issue his first album as a leader until the release of Moving Pictures in 1997. In 2004, Ravi and his He has also worked in the studio with another family member, and experimental music producer Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus
Ravi Coltrane has paid tribute to his parents' music at the SFJAZZ Center before, performing A Love Supreme on the album's 50th anniversary and and returning to the venue multiple times over the years to revisit their classic catalogs with a variety of collaborators. Currently serving as on of the Center's resident artistic directors, he will kick off this run of performances at SFJAZZ Thursday with his electric trio featuring keyboardist Gadi Lehavi and drummer Elé Howell and his longtime acoustic quartet -- now called Coltraxx -- that includes pianist David Virelles, bassist Dezron Douglas, and drummer Johnathan Blake.
On Friday, the acoustic group plays a sold-out tribute to Sanders with a pair of special guests: tenor maestro Joe Lovano (who has performed with Coltrane at Miner Auditorium in the past) and Sanders' son, multi-instrumentalist Tomoki Sanders. On Saturday and Sunday, Coltrane plays new compositions and music by his parents with his new Cosmic Music Quintet that features trumpeter Johnathan Finlayson, pianist Luis Perdomo, bassist Robert Hurst, and drummer Mark Whitfield Jr.
Ravi Coltrane
Thursday-Sunday, 7:30 p.m. (3 p.m. Sun.) $40-$125
Miner Auditorium at the SFJAZZ Center