This period of experimentation proved highly controversial and Coltrane and collaborator Eric Dolphy faced criticism that their music during this period was "anti-jazz". Just imagine, this was recorded on an evening at the Village Gate which also included the groups of Horace Silver and Art Blakey.

Scores of Coltrane heads weaned themselves on the impressive fidelity of “Live” at the Village Vanguard and 1964’s Live at Birdland, both of which were captured with extreme stereo know-how by Rudy Van Gelder. This is Coltrane in a period of transition: he’d had significant success earlier in the year with his My Favourite Things album, and he’d experimented with a larger ensemble on the yet-to-be released Africa/Brass.Sound quality is not ideal but the near 80 minutes of passionate and exploratory jazz on 'Evenings At The Village Gate' should be heard by all Coltrane/Dolphy enthusiasts. In Under the Radar, Matthew Berlyant scored this album 8 out of 10, characterizing the release as "an absolute delight for those who want to hear these two colossuses of the saxophone". Then, in April, the then 36-year-old saxophonist became the first artist signed to Creed Taylor’s new Impulse! Given the rarity and extraordinary circumstances pertaining to the discovery of this music the sound is as good as could be expected, do not let it deter you. Coltrane plays a hit (“My Favorite Things”), a standard from before his era (1936’s “When Lights Are Low”), a song that he would not put out on record for several years (“Impressions”), and a couple of recordings that the world was about to hear in studio form (“Greensleeves” and “Africa”).

Africa/Brass was Coltrane’s most unusual album in the busy year of 1961, and it landed on shelves near the end of his run at the downtown venue.John Coltrane moved from Atlantic to Impulse this year, developing his signature Sheets of Sounds and exploring new heights. Lo-fi, but to complain about that is like whinging that you need your glasses to read the Dead Sea Scrolls.

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. There have been some fascinating, and absorbing, discoveries of previously unissued Coltrane material culled from a variety of sources, but this one takes the biscuit.It was recorded by an engineer without Coltrane's permission and the tape was eventually found in the New York Library of Performing Arts by a Bob Dylan archivist. In Ashley Kahn’s exemplary linernotes to this release, which are accompanied by the memories of Workman and Alderson, he places great importance on that Downbeat article, particularly Dolphy and Coltrane’s answers to the repeated question: “What are you trying to do?