A Love Supreme

Her latest album, Blood Horse, wrestles with darkness and doubt, Shakespeare and spirituality.

And speaking of spirituality, sax player Isaiah Collier has spent much of this year marking the centennial of John Coltrane's so-called spiritual jazz by playing Coltrane's classic A Love Supreme around the country.

But at the same time, Collier has also been singing his own brand of spiritual R&B.

He brings his band to our studio.

One of the things Grace Cummings was talking about was the idea of spirituality, of God without religion.

Well, spirituality is at the heart of the music of the jazz legend John Coltrane, now considered to be one of the pillars of so-called spiritual jazz.

But it's also an important element in the songs of Isaiah Collier, who as a sax player has been touring around this year, the centennial of John Coltrane's birth, playing Coltrane's mammoth piece, A Love Supreme.

Isaiah Collier is probably best known as a jazz sax player, but he's also a multi-instrumentalist and a singer as well, as we found out on his EP called Joy.

Thank you.

Music from John Coltrane's most popular album, A Love Supreme.

The name of the cut is entitled, Song.

And it features the classic quartet, John Coltrane tenor sax, McCoy Tyner tickling the keys on piano, Jimmy Garrison bass, Elvin Jones on drums.

And I found a reissue.

It's a audiophile quality pressing of his, of course, extremely classic album, A Love Supreme.

And this particular pressing, though, is considered perhaps the best reissue of the original tapes.

It was done by a group that is now known for its, again, audiophile, just extremely high-quality craftsmanship in...

I think it's a 10 or 11 minute track.

uh atlantic actually issued a single from my favorite things in 1961 a single cutting cutting up two and a half minutes long right yeah and so you know a way of getting inside this guy but you know if you're going to discuss coltrane you have to that great quartet that he worked with in the 60s elvin jones on drums jimmy garrison on bass mccoy tyner on piano culminating in a love supreme 1965. that's the record everybody points to it is a record i have used many many times for various reasons it is a record it's a meditation in a lot of ways a tone poem a musical prayer of thanks he was thanking god for allowing him to survive heroin use and he thought he was going to die in the 50s he eventually did die of liver cancer But he went on, after he got over heroin, he made some extraordinary music culminating with a Love Supreme.

So it's a four sections, 33 minutes.

It's very accessible, I think.

He repeats that, those four notes, 36 times in the acknowledgement at the top.

It's almost like a chant, a mantra.

The motif becomes the vocal chant, a love supreme.

A love supreme.

Okay.

It's the second song on John Coltrane's album, A Love Supreme called Resolution.

I remember when I walked into my mom's, I can't believe I say my mom's house.

It was my house too, but my mom had so many boyfriends.

If any of our listeners want to pay me some money, yeah, I can give them a tour into Father Toby's office so they can see the library.

And so we were talking about jazz and books and Love Supreme and this connection between jazz musicians and jazz and music.

and faith and spirituality.

So we did the Love Supreme and we did a few other shows with Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, and we'll do some more.

I know you've been on my case about Aretha Franklin because I didn't announce I was going to do.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T.