Pitchblack Playback: John Coltrane (Centennial)

Hear John Coltrane’s ascent (the years with Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk) played front to back, in the dark, in celebration of his hundredth birthday: Warner Records’ new landmark collection, John Coltrane 100: Highlights from 1957–1964, gathering his greatest early works in one place for the first time.

In partnership with Pitchblack Playback, following our June 6 session of Radiohead’s Amnesiac.

The record of those seven years is unmatched in American jazz. In 1957, Coltrane recorded Blue Train and spent six months at the Five Spot in Thelonious Monk’s quartet: the residency he later described as his education. It was also, by his own account, the year of his spiritual awakening; he dated it himself in the liner notes to A Love Supreme. He rejoined Miles Davis in 1958, played on Kind of Blue in 1959, then moved out under his own name. Giant Steps, the classic quartet, My Favorite Things: a run that ended at the doorstep of A Love Supreme and with a horn that had learned how to pray.

Those years were spread across labels, including Prestige, Blue Note, Atlantic, and the labels of his sideman work. For the centennial, Warner Records has licensed and curated the early period into a single release, Highlights from 1957–1964: the first time it stands together, the collaborations with Davis and Monk included.

The collection releases September 23: one hundred years, to the day, since Coltrane was born. Our session follows three days later, in the collection’s first week in the world, as part of the estate’s year-long centenary celebration. Our curated 2-disc play will be 78 minutes, in full darkness, with a ten-minute programmed interval between.