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Cast
John Coltrane — Bandleader, Tenor/saxophonist, Soprano/saxophonist
Elvin Jones — Drummer
Jimmy Garrison — Double bassist
McCoy Tyner — Pianist
Serge Leroy — Movie director
Program notes
The bold and ferocious harmonic imagination of John Coltrane is laid bare in this concert, captured at the Comblain-La-Tour Festival in Belgium, 1965. Alongside his famed quartet, he delivers a transcendent performance that is marked by the total physicality of the music – four sets of hands moving with restless vigour as vapour literally rises from their shoulders and into the night sky.
This is the final footage we have of the quartet in this formation, featuring McCoy Tyner on piano, Elvin Jones on drums and Jimmy Garrison on bass. Together, they deliver “Naima,” a piece from Coltrane’s seminal Giant Steps, “Crescent,” released just the year before with the same musicians and “My Favorite Things,” a crowd-pleaser and a standard, one that demonstrates the bandleader’s exuberant use of the soprano sax, an instrument introduced to him by Miles Davis just before the track’s official recording.
