1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die- Music Banter Edition

**Frownland** · 08-24-2014, 11:17 AM

43. John Coltrane - Ascension (1966)

One of Coltrane's best works that came later on in his career when he started going into his free jazz bent. The album consists of two forty minute improvisations around a variation of the song "Acknowledgement" from A Love Supreme, a record that's just as great. The big band has so many good players including Pharoah Sanders, Elvin Jones, Freddie Hubbard, Archie Shepp, Art Davis, and McCoy Tyner, plus of course Trane is the highlight of this group. The band starts off with the theme and plays forward, falling into and out of it seamlessly. There are parts where the theme is played that sounds like a drunk big band and then it'll simmer down into free jazz. Coltrane took the chaotic nature of free jazz with this record and swiped it clean of its abrasiveness making, dare I say, an accessible free jazz album. This album has so many great moments, if you're a jazz fan who hasn't really looked into free jazz this is a very good place to start (along with Ornette Coleman's Shape of Jazz to Come). Almost any Coltrane album could have made the list and it's very likely that I'll add another of his before this list is up.

08-24-2014, 11:17 AM	#1 (permalink)
Frownland SOPHIE FOREVER Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: East of the Southern North American West Posts: 35,541	43. John Coltrane - Ascension (1966) One of Coltrane's best works that came later on in his career when he started going into his free jazz bent. The album consists of two forty minute improvisations around a variation of the song "Acknowledgement" from A Love Supreme, a record that's just as great. The big band has so many good players including Pharoah Sanders, Elvin Jones, Freddie Hubbard, Archie Shepp, Art Davis, and McCoy Tyner, plus of course Trane is the highlight of this group. The band starts off with the theme and plays forward, falling into and out of it seamlessly. There are parts where the theme is played that sounds like a drunk big band and then it'll simmer down into free jazz. Coltrane took the chaotic nature of free jazz with this record and swiped it clean of its abrasiveness making, dare I say, an accessible free jazz album. This album has so many great moments, if you're a jazz fan who hasn't really looked into free jazz this is a very good place to start (along with Ornette Coleman's Shape of Jazz to Come). Almost any Coltrane album could have made the list and it's very likely that I'll add another of his before this list is up. __________________ Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth. d e a f b o x Last edited by Frownland; 08-24-2014 at 11:43 AM.