Himes, Geoffrey (November 7, 2023). "Give the Jazz Drummers Their Due". Music > Features > Jazz. Paste. ISSN 1540-3106 . Retrieved November 7, 2023. Few were prepared for what they heard. Critics in Downbeat expressed surprise at the vehemence and violence of the music, one called it ‘anti jazz’. ‘My Favourite Things’ album had not been released in the UK. The last time that most people had heard Coltrane on record was the quite conventional work he had recorded with Miles Davis. On the European tour that started in November 1961 the Coltrane group played on a programme after the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet: The contrast highlighted the radical nature of the Coltrane approach. The inclusion of Eric Dolphy whose playing was just as ground breaking as the leader emphasised a new direction. The correspondent from the Melody Maker said that he was bewildered by what he heard. The group was obviously exploring new ideas and new avenues.

Cisterna, Fred (July 23, 2023). "Album of the Week: Coltrane and Dolphy". News. Qobuz . Retrieved July 29, 2023. Falsenthal, Daniel (August 1, 2023). "John Coltrane: Evenings at the Village Gate: John Coltrane With Eric Dolphy". Albums. Pitchfork Media . Retrieved August 2, 2023. Now they have finally come to light, the recordings have been compiled into Evenings at the Village Gate, a forthcoming release on 14 July by Impulse Records, which has released Coltrane’s work since the 1960s. Last week, after hearing the version of "Impressions" from Evenings at the Gate, Ratliff elaborated on this idea. "It's very hard to label or encapsulate, but it's just so ferociously full of life force," he said of the performance. "The musicians know how good this is, and they know how exciting it is — but beyond that, they don't really know much, and it hasn't been called anything yet. There's a lot of the unknown here." This is a crucial album. 1961 was an important, eventful year for Coltrane. He brought out the ‘My Favourite Things’ album. He started the quartet that would influence and define the 1960s. He left Atlantic and joined Impulse. He recorded the sessions at the Village Vanguard and with this quintet he toured Europe and ventured into Britain for concerts that would mystify and outrage.

Caulfield, Keith (July 27, 2023). "Lost John Coltrane Live Album Debuts in Top 10 Across Multiple Billboard Charts". Billboard. ISSN 0006-2510 . Retrieved July 27, 2023. In 2023, we know there are many unreleased Coltrane recordings out there. There are, for instance, around 84 CDs-worth of material in the collection of live tapes the saxophonist and Coltrane aficionado Frank Tiberi made between 1960 and 1964. The recordings, however, are not as felicitous as those heard on Evenings At The Village Gate, and Impulse! and Tiberi do not feel they are candidates for release right now. But sound-restoration technology is improving all the time, and fast, and it is possible that in the not too distant future some at least of the tapes will be of a high enough audio standard to permit release. In a piece on jazz drumming for Paste, Geoffrey Himes called this the "most exciting jazz reissue of the year" and called special attention to Elvin Jones. [14] Hobart, Mike (July 7, 2023). "John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy thrill in Evenings at the Village Gate— album review". Financial Times. ISSN 0307-1766 . Retrieved July 7, 2023.

The 80-minute album — which will be released in physical formats with illuminating liner essays by Workman, Alderson, Grammy-winning jazz writer Ashley Kahn, and saxophonists Branford Marsalis and Lakecia Benjamin — seems guaranteed to reignite conversation about an incipient phase in Coltrane's restless evolution. And it's worth recalling part of the answer he finally gave DeMicheal, for the piece in DownBeat. According to the review aggregator Metacritic, Evenings at the Village Gate: John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy received "universal acclaim" based on a weighted average score of 91 out of 100 from four critic scores. [5]

Details

The Impulse! label has released several outstanding John Coltrane live albums since 2000. With the exception of the latest, the sensational John Coltrane With Eric Dolphy: Evenings At The Village Gate (2023), each was recorded in 1965, the year when Coltrane's classic quartet with pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones, was at its zenith. The 2-CD A Love Supreme: Deluxe Edition (2002), which included a recording, previously available with poor audio only, of Coltrane's signature suite at the Antibes Jazz Festival in July, was followed by another 2-CD, One Down, One Up (2005), recorded at New York's Half Note in March and May. More recently there was A Love Supreme: Live In Seattle (2021), which featured an augmented lineup at the city's Penthouse in October.

And sometimes the music is downright holy. Welcome to the church known as the Village Gate. Welcome to Evenings At The Village Gate: John Coltrane With Eric Dolphy. To be fair, it is easy to imagine that someone who had last heard Coltrane play "When Lights Are Low" as a member of Miles Davis' quintet (as on Davis' 1956 Prestige album Cookin') might have needed smelling salts on hearing his performance with Dolphy at the Gate. It is worth remembering, too, that Coltrane's Africa/Brass (1961), which featured Dolphy, had yet to be released when the Gate recordings were made. This meant that "Greensleeves" and, more to the point, the turbulent "Africa," were likely to be new to many people in the audience, as would be Dolphy himself to some of them. And some audience members may well have been at the club on the strength of Coltrane's current radio hit "My Favorite Things." But the vibe in the room is palpably onside. If the gatekeepers did not get it, it sounds like the paying customers did. WAS AN annus mirabilis for John Coltrane. In March of that year his radical, modal reworking of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s My Favorite Things was an unlikely radio hit for Atlantic Records. Then, in April, the then 36-year-old saxophonist became the first artist signed to Creed Taylor’s new Impulse! label, recording the defiant Africa/Brass and briefly augmenting his piano/bass/drums line-up of McCoy Tyner, Reggie Workman and Elvin Jones with 34-year-old experimental multi-instrumentalist, Eric Dolphy. By the end of the year came another three Coltrane LPs, all of them capturing the sound of an artist in a constant state of flux and evolution. This sort of glowing reception has not always been the case for Trane, however – particularly during his own lifetime, it’s worth mentioning – as this recording highlights a performance from an era that brought much turmoil for one of the most iconic figures of 20th-century jazz. In fact, critics and lay audiences alike found themselves fraught with animosity in opposition to the challenging and experimental nature of the performer’s content at the time. Contemporary listeners in 1961 no doubt would have stumbled across a review in DownBeatreferring to his music made in collaboration with Dolphy as "anarchistic" and "a horrifying demonstration of what appears to be a growing anti-jazz trend." This comes as no surprise, given the most up-to-date impression of the saxophonist would have been his signature tune which, at that time, had more sooner been associated with the warbling role of a young Austrian nun. Eric Dolphy in Copenhagen, 1961 (Image: JP Jazz Archive/Redferns)

On The Go

The recordings, uncovered at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, were made by engineer Rich Alderson as part of a test of the Village Gate’s then-new sound system. The tapes seemed to have been lost, were found, but then disappeared again into Library’s vast sound archives. August 1961. Just three months (and an eight-minute walk) before the start of Coltrane's mind-bending, soul-searching run at the Village Vanguard that culminated in the release Coltrane Live at the Village Vanguard (Impulse!, 1962) and expanded in 1997 with the 4CD box set The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings (Impulse!). a b c Chinen, Nate (May 31, 2023). "John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy's fearless experiment sets a new album ablaze". Music News. Consider This. NPR . Retrieved June 2, 2023. Evenings at the Village Gate: John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy was commercially successful, debuting at No.8 on Top Album Sales, No.1 on Jazz Albums, No.1 on Traditional Jazz Albums, No.4 on Tastemaker Albums, No.7 on Top Current Album Sales, No.10 on Vinyl Albums, and No.156 on Billboard200 charts. [16] Chart performance for Evenings at the Village Gate: John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy Chart