First Meditations

John Coltrane | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 7, 1992)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Grp Records
• ASIN: B000003N6H
• Also Available in: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,907 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #59 in Music > Jazz > Avant Garde & Free Jazz

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Most Overlooked in the "Classic Quartet" Canon!, August 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: First Meditations (Audio CD)

Somewhere lost between the avant-garde adulation of "Ascension" and the historic praise of "Love Supreme" is this forgotten gem.Maybe it's posthumous release or the dreadful cover art has kept it from wider acceptance. At once raging,tender, and abstract it contains some of the Classic Quartets finest moments. If for no other reason, a must-buy just for the album opener "Love"... Truly one of Trane's most beautiful performances and one of those rare moments in music... when all heaven breaks loose.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing - one of Trane's best, July 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: First Meditations (Audio CD)

The fact that an album like this wasn't released until several years after Coltrane's death speaks volumes about his productivity. To my knowledge, this 1965 set was the final studio recording by the Coltrane/Tyner/Jones/Garrison quartet, widely regarded as one of the greatest groups in all of jazz history.

"First Meditations" is a quartet version of Coltrane's "Meditations" suite. The better-known sextet version with Pharoah Sanders and Rasheed Ali is ferociously intense and dissonant, enough to scare a Coltrane novice away for good. The quartet version on this recording is nearly as impassioned, but thoroughly enjoyable to any fan of the classic quartet. If you enjoy "A Love Supreme", check this one out - more than any other recording, "First Meditations" is the sequel.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very, very beautiful, April 14, 2006

By 

H. Lim (Carlingford, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: First Meditations (Audio CD)

Coltrane was in transition when he recorded this version of Meditations. The album was only released in the 1970s. Although Trane's style is beyond A Love Supreme, it has not yet crossed the boundary to his full later style. Listen to the way his soloing on "Love" slowly ascends to an improvisation of pure sound, screaming atonally. These steps to a fully free style are only tentative, however.

THis is also the last album recorded by the classic quartet that had faithfully served Trane (in one form or another) since about 1960. There is definitely strain between Trane and his less enthusiastic pianist, Tyner. Tyner seems determined to hold back Coltrane's music and somehow make it fit into classic music theory. When Coltrane begins screeching, Tyner frantically plays louder and more severely, trying to catch the leader's stratospheric ambition in the gravity of classic harmony.

Nevertheless, the music is incredibly beautiful. The tune "Compassion" may be my favourite, with a music theme that might represent the heartbeat of God. "Joy" is very fierce and uplifting; "Love" is strangely angst-ridden.