Ascension [Original recording remastered]

John Coltrane | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 6, 2000)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Label: Polygram Records
• ASIN: B00004TA40
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #144,033 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Few works remain genuinely controversial 35 years after their inception, but Ascension can generate as mixed a response today as it did when it was released. In May 1965, Coltrane assembled 10 other musicians for one of his most ambitious recordings, a 40- minute piece that was a landmark in the free-jazz movement and a key moment in Coltrane's sponsorship of the younger members of the New York avant-garde. Along with his regular rhythm section--McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones--the band includes trumpeters Dewey Johnson and Freddie Hubbard, tenor saxophonists Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders, altoists Marion Brown and John Tchicai, and Art Davis playing bowed bass. The improvised ensembles shout and cry with galvanizing power, their tension testifying to Coltrane's influence and the saxophone's dominance in the style. It's both brilliant and flawed work, however, in ways that go to the heart of Coltrane's musical thought. It's rooted in modal music, with a brief pentatonic figure (a variation on the opening motif of A Love Supreme) as its basis. While it's broken up by the intense ensembles, the string of solos seems too close to a Jazz at the Philharmonic approach to free jazz. The horns stretch toward energy music, while the rhythm section, particularly Tyner, seems rooted in modality. As a result, the soloists often come off the soaring blowouts to find themselves with little more support than a reiterated chord, and they sometimes seem to merely run out of steam. It's still startling music, though, and necessary listening, whether for the sheer power of the ensembles, the sustained creativity of Coltrane and Sanders, the stylistic contrasts in the horn players, or the acerbic understatement of Tchicai, so effective in the midst of the maelstrom. Coltrane couldn't decide on which of the two versions he preferred, and Edition II was covertly substituted for Edition I during the run of the original LP. This CD manages to include both. --Stuart Broomer

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More twistedly beautiful than it has a right to be., March 25, 2004

By 

spiral_mind (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ascension (Audio CD)

Thelonious Monk gave the usual notions of atonality a skewed twist. Miles Davis used the idea of modes to break free of plain chord changes. Ornette Coleman took a leap and produced an album-length group improvisation based only on a loose chordal framework. And in 1965 John Coltrane one-upped them all, assembling an eleven-piece group from various schools of jazz and turning them all loose for 40 minutes with almost no planning whatsoever. The result is something often cacophonous, squealingly chaotic and impenetrably difficult, and this CD contains both complete takes totaling a whopping 78 minutes. Not for the faint-hearted, this.

The great Coltrane quartet is joined here by an extra bassist and six more sax/horn players. With this many instruments jostling for space it's inevitable that the mix is anarchic and very crowded. John wrote out an order for solos and told everyone he wanted a crescendo/decrescendo before and after each one; that's it. That's all. Otherwise everything that came out was off the top of the group's collective head. Everyone brings their own voice to the table, from the trademark white-hot Trane soloing to the hard bop of Freddie Hubbard to the far-out freeness of Pharaoh Sanders, and even though it all seems jumbled at first, the variety does help keep things interesting.

Opinions are divided to this day on whether Ascension is an incoherent skronking mess or an expression of some ineffable spiritual feeling (as JC intended). Everyone agrees that it's loose, disjointed and sometimes harshly atonal; the difference between the love and hate camps lies in how it's listened to and appreciated. I'm not even sure what I hear after a couple dozen spins. I just get the feeling that there's Something in there somewhere, which might make itself heard once I can listen without screaming (as some people in the studio supposedly were during the recording).

This disc can make a good first entry into the world of free jazz if you know what you're in for, although it can also be better appreciated after working through some of the more accessible stuff. If you're only curious, try Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz album or Coltrane's Meditations first. If you're already prepared for the most harsh kind of chaos.. it's still hard to guess whether Ascension will be a spiritual revelation or a pounding migraine. The only way to find out is to listen at least five or six times. When there's this much on the buffet, it takes a good few trips to get an idea of just what's on offer.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mad cacophony or pure delight?, June 3, 2001

By 

Ricard Giner ([e-mail]) (Brighton, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ascension (Audio CD)

Is this extraordinary document an indigestible cacophony of anarchy in brass and bass, or the artistic culmination of a man's desire to explore the outer reaches of tonality and the inner limits of freedom? Is Ascension a transcendental event in jazz history or an anomalous experiment that perseveres in its periphery?

Certainly no one has attempted anything like this again. The only comparable experiment prior to Ascension had been Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz of 1960. But Free Jazz had deliberately placed two quartets side-by-side and ordered the solos into a formal, structured framework that seemed to belie the project's self-conscious aim to challenge rigidity altogether. Coltrane's Ascension subverted even the precedent that Free Jazz had established.

Coltrane had, in less than a decade, transformed the jazz world's expectations of the possibilities of the tenor, even of the role of the solo per se. Now this troubled, intense man turned his attention to the possibilities of a larger group than he normally played in or led.

Rather than creating a recognisable background for the musicians to express themselves, he de-contextualised and fragmented the orthodox syntactical elements of jazz, viz. tempo, rhythm and pulse, harmonic progressions and set "changes", keys and tonal centres, thus leaving the musicians to articulate their responses only to each other and not to the support that the syntax would have otherwise provided. There were certain rules, so to speak: built in to the work was a succession of solos, as well as a "juxtaposition of tonally centred ideas and atonal elements" (Archie Shepp's words in the liner notes). The solo opportunities were created to allow the musicians an unfettered dialogue with the ensemble.

The musicians were a mix of contemporary and established stars, such as Coltrane himself, Freddie Hubbard, Archie Shepp, McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones, and emerging voices such as Marion Brown and Pharoah Sanders. Coltrane's leadership on such an unusual, unprecedented project was crucial. He alone possessed the vision and charisma necessary to push these artists to break the dichotomy between backing and solo. Individual and collective voice became one.

What's the music like? Sound, sound, sound, a vast enveloping texture of brass. Look out for Sanders' solo - it's unlike anything you've ever heard (unless you've been deep in the jungle). It might be useful to follow the order of the soloists: Coltrane (tenor sax), Dewey Johnson (trumpet), Pharoah Sanders (tenor sax), Freddie Hubbard (trumpet), Archie Shepp (tenor sax), John Tchicai (alto sax), Marion Brown (alto sax).

And what's the experience like? Played loud, it'll do something for you that might approximate what it was like for the musicians. In the words of Marion Brown, "wildly exciting."

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My favorite of Coltrane's Free Period, April 12, 2003

By 

Nathaniel Earls (Kansas City, MO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ascension (Audio CD)

When you look at Coltrane's recording career as a whole (only 13 years), he was constantly progressing (or maybe regressing), but to be sure Coltrane in '55 didn't sound anything like Coltrane in '59 which didn't sound anything like Coltrane in '63 which didn't anything like Coltrane in '65. He moved from bop to modal to free. So you don't like skronking and squealing sax freakouts. Great. You don't have to. But don't say its good the man died and couldn't brutally abuse the horn anymore and that it sounds like a bunch of little children. Don't get angry that he betrayed you for degenerating into deliriousness. And don't get angry at me and call me pretentious for liking something you strongly dislike. Its all subjective.

All that being said, I love this record. I think it is intense. It starts off at the peak and gradually each horn soloist brings it down before McCoy's solo and the bass duet and then they do one more segment of free improvisation. The three tenor sax players really do dominate this record but Marion Brown has something to say as well. And when they launch into skronking and squealing, perhaps its not "musical" but that doesn't matter to me because I can feel it. I think the album was titled Ascension in a spiritual context, which is what Coltrane's music had become by this time, a deep spiritual search for some otherworldly communication that he never felt he quite grasped.

Multiple listens have revealed more and more each time. Bob Thiele's production is spectacular the way he sonically articulates each player. And after listening to the solos numerous times I have begun to pick out all of the individual voices in the screaming ensemble passages and it's interesting to hear how they work as an open forum for dialogue between players. Both takes differ significantly as well.

Overall its my favorite record of this era of Coltrane. I also like Ornette, Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor and Sun Ra, so I guess I am a fan of free jazz. If you're not, that's fine. Or if you are, but you just don't like Ascension, that's fine too. It's all subjective.