The year is 1960, and legendary jazz saxophonist John Coltrane is close to quitting Miles Davis's band. They are on tour, performing in Paris. This is a live recording of their performance in Paris on March 21st, 1960.
0:14 Miles Davis plays the melody of "Bye Bye Blackbird" on muted trumpet.
1:10 Miles takes an improvised solo on the chord changes.
4:57 Coltrane begins his long improvisation on the chord changes.
7:23 Where you might think Coltrane would end his long solo, he keeps going, his improvisation getting more and more "challenging".
8:20 Coltrane keeps going, and the Paris crowd doesn't know what to make of it.
9:17 The crowd gets restless- you can hear them start to whistle and make noise- what is going on? What is Coltrane doing? And is the crowd cheering or protesting?
9:58 Now the crowd REALLY doesn't know what to make of things. The tension is electric. Coltrane is undaunted in his passionate improvisatory solo which has now gone on for close to 6 minutes.
10:39 Perhaps a consensus has emerged: the crowd bursts into applause before Coltane's solo ends.
11:00 Coltrane's solo ends, and Wynton Kelly begins his piano solo, which is sparkling and as swinging as it gets- but after hearing Coltrane, is the way that we hear Wynton Kelly forever changed?
At the end of the tour, Coltrane quits Miles' band.
30 сен 2024
