John Coltrane live at Sankei Hall

Tokyo, Japan July 11th, 1966

John Coltrane’s last international tour in the summer of 1966 found the group peaking. Coltrane was famously known at the time to be the biggest musician in Japan, as evidenced by the thousands of fans who greeted him and the band at the airport.  Their 17 concerts over the course of the 14 day visit shook the nation and the world.  

They open with “Afro-Blue”.  John’s signature four note beckoning fills the room, with Pharoah Sanders jumping in on seizing tambourines.  Rashied Ali’s snares and cymbals spill into space like an exorcism, while Jimmy Garrison drills the bass figures into the center of the earth.  And that’s just the groundwork.  Coltrane’s horn sings to heaven, hell and everywhere in between, he delivers non-stop eruptions lasting nearly an hour each.  Rising toward the world above, the saxophone screams and uproots convention, not by dismissing it, by levitating.  Alice Coltrane’s piano is an angelic gift, where we also hear an eternal story.  In it we experience the openings of doors through which her beloved husband enters the divine.  The intervals and chord structures in her solos preempt the harp playing she’d begin exploring shortly after this concert with her late spouse.  We hear the John Coltrane group moving beyond the musical sum of its parts into a free and urgent realm.  As we listen we try to catch up and meet them there.