John Coltrane

Born in Hamlet, North Carolina in 1926 and later trained in Philadelphia, John Coltrane established himself in the 1950s as one of the central saxophonists of modern jazz, initially in bebop and hard bop, before expanding his language toward modal, post-bop, free jazz and a very personal form of spiritual jazz. Having passed through the groups of Dizzy Gillespie, Johnny Hodges and then Miles Davis, with whom he notably contributed to the rise of modal jazz, John Coltrane also marks his career by his collaboration with Thelonious Monk in 1957, a key moment in the evolution of his phrasing and improvisational sense. As a leader, he recorded Blue Train in 1958, Giant Steps in 1960, My Favorite Things in 1961 and A Love Supreme in 1965, albums that chart a trajectory from dense harmonic writing to more open, repetitive and meditative forms. His quartet with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones remains the core of this period, before the arrival of musicians such as Eric Dolphy, Pharoah Sanders or Rashied Ali in a more free and intense aesthetic. On tenor as on soprano, John Coltrane develops a taut, mobile sound, often traversed by long phrases and explicit spiritual quest, nourished also by Indian and African music. He died in 1967 in Huntington, New York, and John Coltrane continues to occupy a singular place in the history of jazz in the twentieth century.