Today is the birthday of John Coltrane, who passed in mid-1967.  Were he still living, he would now be 91.

A few years ago a friend of mine asked what my favorite Coltrane piece was. Normally, I find such questions confounding, even vexing, but that night something popped right into my mind:

The harmonic structure here is very simple, like a hymn or a spiritual, and the motion of that harmony is quite slow, seeming to hover circling over a lightly pulsing wash of almost whispering cymbals. The solo lines – on saxophone , then piano, then saxophone again – are what they are, and beyond the ability of any adjective to describe…

Of course, then I asked my friend what her favorite Coltrane was.  She promptly replied:

The theme is first played very slowly, with a very slight rubato, by the saxophone, accompanied by the full band – it owes  much to the blues and spirituals, though I also hear an echo of the more lyrical aspects of other forms of Americana and classical music.  The tempo then shifts to something a bit faster and steadier, with solos, based on the same harmonic structure, by piano accompanied by bass and drums, then by bass surrounded only by silence – as if the music is going deeper and quieter into the center of sadness and the human soul.  Then the main theme returns – as if returning to normal after a period of profound introspection and contemplation.

Finally, for the more astrologically-minded, and since it’s that time of year, here’s this: