Soultrane

Description

When he entered the studio on February 7, 1958 to record "Soultrane," his third album as a leader for the Prestige label, saxophonist John Coltrane was on the path to redemption. Dismissed a few months earlier from Miles Davis's new quintet due to serious drug problems, the musician had just found new momentum in his recent collaboration with Thelonious Monk at the Five Spot Café in New York, experimenting in this unprecedented context with an even more personal and lyrical saxophone style. Accompanied by a trio of admirable cohesion and particularly stimulating, featuring alongside pianist Red Garland, Paul Chambers on double bass and Art Taylor on drums, John Coltrane, while continuing to fully inscribe his music in the hard bop aesthetic that characterized his previous recordings, asserts here in his saxophone voice as in his leadership a new authority. Alternating heady ballads of overwhelming intensity ("I Want to Talk About You", "Theme for Ernie"), a mid-tempo piece full of confidence and relaxation ("Good Bait"), and a breathtaking bop transfiguration of virtuosity of the Irving Berlin standard "Russian Lullaby" - John Coltrane shows himself, throughout this inspired session, masterful in concentration, intensity and inventiveness.