Meditations

Artist: John Coltrane
Label: Grp Records
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Format: Original recording remastered
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1

UPC: 011105019927
EAN: 0011105019927
ASIN: B000003N8P

Release Date: 1996-09-24

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Avant Garde & Free Jazz

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Listmania:

Really modern Jazz
Great years In Music: 1966 (or why music now sucks)
Yet another list of desert island albums
The Essential John Coltrane
The Ultimate Coltrane
My Favorite Coltrane Recordings
Moving avant-garde and free jazz
Yet another best of John Coltrane list
JOHN COLTRANE, PART 2
John Coltrane (not for sissies)

Tracks:

The Father And The Son And The Holy Ghost
Compassion
Love
Consequence
Serenity

Similar Items:

Interstellar Space
Ascension
Stellar Regions
Kulu Se Mama
Crescent

Customer Reviews:

I wish I could sit down with 'Trane and chat.......2007-03-05

This is not for the faint of heart. That being said, this is one powerful work. You wonder what he was feeling and thinking spiritually...here he is once again trying to "say" with his horn what he was feeling inside, and a dialogue with Miles Davis says it all: Miles: "Man, why you playin' all those NOTES?!?!" Trane: I've got so much inside of me I'm afraid I won't get it all out!" As the years went by you could tell that Trane was STILL trying to get his spirituality "on record"...God and Trane only know if he succeeded. Like many, on first listen you have to wonder if the CD is skipping or defective (this is NOT "make-out music")...but after several listens it becomes more listenable and almost a worship service. This is not a review of the album, but when I bought this I was dating a "smooth-jazz" lover who brought her collection of Kenny G.(gag me with spoon) et al discs when she moved in....one evening she put five "saxophone" discs in the changer for a "romantic evening"....this was one of them...she didn't know Trane, bless her heart...so the evening started with smooth sounds of "jazz" during dinner but right before the main course this disc came into PLAY position. Boy, the look on her face....
over time, starting with Miles' great quintet to 'Giant Steps' and onward she got "the message"....I never heard Kenny G. again (there IS a God!).
Thank you, Mr. John Coltrane, for sharing your genius and Spirituality with us. No-one has even come close. This is music, but it is more than that: it is a man, a very great man, sharing his innermost thoughts, dreams, voices, and hopes with us through his horn.

Better than First Meditations.......2006-08-25

Many have said that the (originally suppressed) Quartet version of this album is better than the album itself. But I think this version of the Meditations suite is actually better; at least, it forms more of a unity that actually makes a statement. As with A Love Supreme, Meditations seems to tell a story, or at least follow a concept.

"Father Son and Holy Ghost" (a.k.a. "Leo") was one of Coltrane's standards through 1966 and 1967. It is a composition that is unique to this version of the album. Coltrane and Sanders play a grinding multiphonic motif that (as is stated in the liner notes) is oddly reminiscent of "speaking in tongues". Coltrane then plays a countertheme that is deceptively child-like, a playful hymn-like bit that is almost like something by Albert Ayler.

"Compassion" is, admittedly, much better on the First Meditations album. This version is almost unrecogniseable, except for the bassline. The haunting repetitious motif of the older version is clipped and stunted here; and the "heartbeat of God" motif of the original is also not very clear.

"Love" begins with a bass solo by Garrison, followed by a startlingly beautiful rubato statement by Coltrane. It is also more beautiful than the version on "First Meditations".

The music shifts without pause to Coltrane playing the almost unrecogniseable tune "Consequences", mostly to introduce a shockingly ugly solo by Sanders.

Finally "Serenity" begins with McCoy Tyner leading seamlessly off from "Consequences" into a piano solo. This is my favourite Tyner piano solo, at first accompanied by the others, and then going off unaccompanied. His usual block-chord style gives way to something that sounds remarkably like Keith Jarret - a themeless improvisation of great beauty.
Coltrane then plays another beautiful rubato solo, the theme of "Serenity", which lasts only three minutes.

This is an album that has an undeserved reputation for being impenetrable. It may not be totally accessible, but it is a powerful statement from a master musician, and a more coherent experience than "First Meditations".

Peak of similar music........2006-08-08

Close your eyes and listen. It's from 1965 when Beatles issued Help!!!!! This is clear, spiritual music. Coltrane plays in low registry of his sax while Sanders screams. But no exhibition in their playing just freedom and originality. There are great piano and drums on this cd too. Songs like The Father and the Son and the Holy ghost (on this album), Kulu se mama or OM are peaks of this type of music. Highly recommend.

Punching a Hole in Heaven.......2006-04-06

For many years, those of us who couldn't find the original album (which seemed to go out of print right after it was issued) had to content ourselves with a less than 5 minute excerpt from FS&HG on "The Best of John Coltrane, V.II." And as fine as the rest of Meditations is, this album's reason for existence is The Father, Son and Holy Ghost--one of the supreme mastepieces of modern music. There's certainly nothing in all of Energy Music that reaches a higher high, and the towering climax that Elvin Jones and Rashied Ali thrash out under Coltrane's frantic, rising solo immediately before Pharoah Sanders enters is, to the best of my knowledge, unique in all of music. People who liken listening this to a religious experience aren't being pretentious in my opinion--if any music is capable of punching a hole in heaven and bringing the listener to the next level, it's got to be this. It's still unbelievable to me that music could rise to this level of intensity without completely coming apart. I could wax poetic about the effect this piece had on a bunch of teenage jazz lovers in 1972, but what's the point. This is really the type of music that takes up where words leave off. A lot of avant-garde jazz is just noise, loud or quiet, but not this time. As we used to say, John Coltrane didn't die, he just got too heavy for the world and fell off. Before he did, however, he broke through to the Other Side, if only for a few seconds. Get this disc and listen to one of the most amazing performances in all of music. And the rest of it ain't bad either.

The record that turned this metalhead onto jazz.......2006-01-20

Track one has been described as sounding like a "train-wreck"..this is absolutely true...and much like a train wreck, "The Father the Son and the Holy Ghost" consists of nothing but passion, fire and fury. When I heard this for the first time about 6 years ago, I couldn't believe that this was the same guy that did "Love Supreme"...you know, the record all snobby old stuffy people have on their shelves next to "Kind of Blue". Yawn. I'm not dissing these beautiful landmark records, I'm just saying that I was pleased to discover that Coltrane, as well as Davis, were two cats completely driven to explore and express themselves through the power of music, conventions be damned. So if track one scares you, just skip it...and DEFINITELY skip the Coltrane album "Ascension", which I decree as being more intense than Slayers' entire catalogue COMBINED. You can't fake this stuff, it's coming from his LUNGS, his HEART, his SOUL. So to all those who just hear a "train wreck", stick yer heads back in the sand, cuz the gospel according to Coltrane is just too scary for you.
Oh yeah, after track one, (which flows nicely into "Compassion"), you may begin to serve cocktails-proceedings from here on in are much more "civilized" (until track 4 "Consequences" that is! Look out!!), but no less compelling. A vital album.

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