JOHN AND ALICE COLTRANE

COSMIC MUSIC

  1/  Manifestation                              (J. Coltrane)                 11.14
  2/  Lord Help Me To Be                         (A. Coltrane)                 7.11
  3/  Reverend King                              (J. Coltrane)                 10.45
  4/  The Sun                                    (A. Coltrane)                 3.50

          Produced by Bob Thiele

Alice Coltrane: piano; John Coltrane (1,3): sax, clarinet, invocation; Pharoah Sanders: flute, sax, invocation; Ben Riley (2,4): drums, percussion; Rashied Ali (1,3): drums, percussion; Jimmy Garrison: bass; Ray Appleton (1,3): percussion.

          1968 - Impulse! (USA), AS-9148 (Vinyl)
          19?? - Impulse! (Japan) (CD)

Note: Tracks 2 and 4 are available on the Alice Coltrane US CD release of A MONASTIC TRIO.

REVIEWS :

Cosmic Music was originally released on John Coltrane's own label (Coltranr Records)during 1967. If memory serves me correctly, Mr. Coltrane was becoming increasingly more enthralled with drums and the rhythmic diversity offered by complementary polyrhytmic drum combinations. On this particular recording the two drummers (Rashied Ali and Ray Appleton or Ben Riley) combine to provide a soloist with more rhythmic options against which to craft his or her statement. It is because of this and several other devices at work that John Coltrane's music sounds so free, and open to endless expressive possibilities. It must be noted however that this music's lesson illustrates the Principle (also vividly articulated by SUN RA) that it takes a highly disciplined musician to to suggest the stucture of freedom in a musical context.

As much as one is drawn to the delicate but insistent and strong playing of Alice Coltrane and the tonal beauty of the Tenor Saxophone playing of Mssrs. Coltrane and Sanders, to me, they pale in comparison to the tonal revelation of John Coltrane on Bass Clarinet. I've been listening to the music for forty years and have heard many of the best, but Coltrane's tone is so rich and round and full , even in the higher registers, that this recording's unique testimony to the expressive skills of creative musicians makes it a true gem and icon of the musical genre.

If you listen carefully, during Manifestation, you will hear one of the most truly remarkable, and close to suggesting the devine, moments in any music when Mr. Coltrane, Mr. Sanders, and Mr. Garrison converge on a single note with individual and intense permutations of texture and timbre and then hyper-quickly diverge into the deeper reaches of inner space.

This is truly an album you don't want to miss hearing if you are a seeker of new possibilities and new food for spiritual contemplation and development.

a music fan (courtesy of the Amazon.com website)