John Coltrane’s Rare “A Love Supreme” Live Performance Features Dual Bassists

by Kevin Johnson Sunday, October 24th, 2021

John Coltrane: A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle Saxophone legend John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme was a game changer. The album’s transcendental nature was the beginning of the final phase of his career, focusing on spiritual and free sounds. He only performed it twice in public and now one of those performances is available.

A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle features Coltrane with a seven-piece band to fill out his musical vision. That included his classic quartet of McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, and Jimmy Garrison as well as saxophonists Pharoah Sanders and Carlos Ward and a second bassist: Donald Rafael Garrett.

“The significance of ‘A Love Supreme: Live In Seattle’ is heightened by the fact that Coltrane seldom performed his four-part suite after originally recording it in the studio in 1964,” a press release explains. “Composed and created as a public declaration of his personal spiritual beliefs and universalist sentiment, it became a best-seller and received a GRAMMY nod the next year. For more than six decades, it seemed the only recorded public performance of ‘A Love Supreme’ took place at a French festival at Juan-Les-Pains in July 1965 and was released almost twenty years ago. The tape reels containing this performance from October 1965 sat in the private collection of Seattle saxophonist and educator Joe Brazil, heard by a few fortunate musicians and friends-and largely unknown until now.”

Hear the full ensemble on the opening piece, “Pt. I – Acknowledgement”: