One More Stellar Offering

On February 15, 1967, it was business as usual for John Coltrane & his bandmates (his wife Alice on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, & Rashied Ali on drums) when they checked into Rudy Van Gelder's recording studio in New Jersey. Yet it also would be one of his final days in the studio as well; around that same time frame, he made compositions which would find their way on to Expression, a drums-tenor duo called Interstellar Space...what of the other recordings which he committed to tape that day?

For almost 30 years, the master tapes were in Alice's care, but the end result, Stellar Regions, finally saw the light of day in 1995 & Alice saw to it that these recordings (almost all of them unreleased, with the exception of "Offering," which appears on Expression) were not left out of the picture any longer.

As on Expression, the performances on Stellar Regions reveal how Coltrane's constant musical searching was leading him further out. And yet the pieces are shorter, more focused & disciplined...& of course, they each reveal an aching beauty which has only grown stronger with further listening. And truth be told, they reveal Trane in a mellow mood as well.

Like the titles suggest, each piece could be best described as Trane heading out for not only the outer reaches of space but also beyond it as well: "Seraphic Light," the title track (one of the best ballads Trane ever did in his late phase), "Tranesonic" & "Sun Star" are proof of that from the get-go. Even if he was no longer playing music you could tap your feet to as he relied exclusively on free tempo & pulse at this juncture, John Coltrane could still deliver the goods as these outtakes reveal more closely.

One of the highlights of this whole affair would have to be "Offering." Starting out with a phrase of a few notes, echoing the introduction to A Love Supreme, Trane sounds not only passionate & urgent as always but more sharper than ever, sensing that he still had something to prove to the jazz community. And two-thirds of the way in, a blazing drums-tenor duo takes "Offering" to new heights; surely, this piece for me is pure sonic exploration at its finest.

Only a few months later, on July 17, John Coltrane would pass on but his music has still found ways to endure & keep enduring over time; one only wonders which direction he would have taken his music had his life not ended so abruptly. (Tomorrow will mark the 40th anniversary of his passing.) Yet with a release like Stellar Regions, one can also sense where Coltrane was headed musically: further out, still searching, still restless as ever.