Customer Reviews

Jazz Icons: John Coltrane Live in '60, '61 & '65

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What can be said about Trane that hasn't been said before? Well after watching this DVD, you probably won't say anything because your jaw will be hanging for an elongated period due to the bombarding attack that has just pierced your ears, eyes, and soul. Seriously guys, this is a SMOKIN' HOT DVD!! You get 3 sets: Germany-March 28 1960 with the 'Kind of Blue' band(Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb, and Wynton Kelly), Germany-December 4 1961 with Eric Dolphy & Reggie Workman(Jimmy Garrison had not joined the band full time yet. This set was filmed a month after the famed Village Vanguard sets), & Belgium-August 1 1965 with the Classic Quartet of McCoy, Elvin, & Jimmy(This set was filmed a mere five days after their gig at the Antibes Jazz Festival in France, which was the only time A Love Supreme was performed in its entirety). This 3rd set is worth having the DVD alone. It showcases the Quartet at the height of their powers. A stunning all out 'Vigil' kicks off the 3 song set, with everyone absolutely feeding off each other. John then brings it down a couple of notches with his beautiful ballad 'Naima', and to go out with a bang(and two foot stomps), you get 21 minutes of pyrotechnics with 'My Favorite Things'. Thus ends the bombardment. This 3rd set is some of the heaviest playing I have ever heard, any band, any genre. And you can't classify it as just jazz, its actually progressive music. Just a year later Mike Bloomfield composed East-West while he was with the Butterfield Blues Band, seemingly carrying the progressive torch that John had lit. A year later you get Cream turning it upside down, then The Grateful Dead, The Allman Brothers Band, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Jaco, the list goes on. This is just me rambling.

GET THIS DVD!! Matter of fact, go for all the titles in the Jazz Icons series. Jazz is a great art form, its provided so much influence on so many styles and forms. And for a little over a decade, a man named John William Coltrane helped redefine the idiom. Add this priceless investment to your music DVD collection today!

What an amazing piece of artistic history captured on film. The 1960 segment is some of the hardest swinging ever recorded. You have a Dream rhythm section- (Wynton Kelly, Mr. P.C. and Cobb) and Trane in a very transitional period stylistically. Absolutely brilliant.

The 1965 stuff is unreal, just when you think the band hits an apex in the pieces, it finds a 7th and 8th gear to go into almost telepathically. The music is so complex, yet so raw and exposed and presented without pretension that it really transcends classification or definition. Words can't be used to describe it. Skip the pizza and beer for a night and spend the cash on this instead.

This is Coltrane at his peak:

(Germany, 1960)

On Green Dolphin Street

Walkin'

The Theme

Autumn Leaves / What's New / Moonlight in Vermont

Hackensack

(Germany, 1961)

My Favourite Things

Ev'rytime We Say Goodbye

Impressions

(Belgium, 1965)

Vigil

Naima

My Favourite Things

Leave it to Naxos to present these concerts on a high quality/low cost disk. Even the most casual jazz fan will love this.

!Wow

This is some great stuff that they have dug out of the vaults. Seeing this rare John Coltrane footage is something to be hold. This dvd shows footage of 3 of Coltrane`s concerts from 1960, 1961, and 1965. All 3 shows smoke and gives you a chance to see these greats in top form. All I can say is purchase this dvd now.

These three black and white performances(two in Germany and one in Belgium) sport great performances by Coltrane, his quartet and guests Oscar Peterson, Stan Getz and Eric Dolphy. Wynton Kelly plays piano on the first track rather than McCoy Tyner. I was amazed at the quality of cinematography and editing. The last performance in Belgium in '65 has inspired performances all around and is visually stunning and surreal. Apparently, it was a very cold auditorium or outdoors. The performers' bodies, especially drummer Elvin Jones, literally steam!!! It was great to see how Coltrane's stage presence evolved from rather stilted to dynamic like a charismatic preacher. Things start a little slow and the bowed bass solos seem to add little, but the early Peterson solo and then all of the latter tracks blew me away! No interviews, no narration. Roughly 90 minutes of music.

This is the Coltrane live-performance DVD we've all been waiting for. Not only does it include the late saxophonist's famous 1961 German television appearance (in which the musicians play amidst a cool modernist steel-girder studio set), it also boasts ultra-rare footage of the Coltrane Quartet's dynamic set at a 1965 outdoor jazz festival in Belgium, a time when Trane was really pushing the avant-garde envelope. As if that weren't enough, this disc also presents a recently unearthed German TV broadcast from 1960, showing Coltrane playing with Miles Davis' rhythm section, plus guest artists Oscar Peterson and Stan Getz. The DVD is sequenced chronologically, and thus opens with Coltrane in concert with the Davis group (sans Miles). It's interesting to watch Coltrane holding himself back working within a more formal and less adventurous musical setting than the one he would soon adopt. He showcases his angular lyricism on several classic tunes included in the famous trumpeter's repertoire, playing beautifully with Davis' sidemen (Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb), but one can sense his impatience to break free of the group he'd been with for five years and hook up with more forward-thinking musicians. The 1961 TV performance finds him in the company of just such a group--pianist McCoy Tyner, drummer Elvin Jones, bassist Reggie Workman and alto saxophonist/flutist Eric Dolphy--as they burn through inspired renditions of "My Favorite Things," "Every Time We Say Goodbye" and "Impressions." As the camera darts around the expressionistic set, Coltrane and his hand picked musicians lay down the new musical language that was already shaking jazz's foundations. After Dolphy left and Workman was replaced by Jimmy Garrison, Coltrane's sound ascended to an even higher level of experimentation. Tyner's natural lyricism helped balance Coltrane's abstract excursions, while Garrison somehow kept the time and Jones laid down his own fierce polyrhythmic statements. However, this particular group was nearing the end of its run by the time of the Belgium gig--Tyner and Jones left some five months later. And Coltrane would give us just two more years of incredible music before prematurely leaving the planet, which makes these remarkable, rarely seen performances even more important historically and culturally.

The first and third parts of this DVD are truly rare and amazing. I have been a devout Coltrane fan for many years and I have never seen the footage of him quartet with Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, and Jimmy Cobb. Plus as an extra treat, we get to see the great Stan Getz sit in with the band! Stan Getz was a huge influence not only on Coltrane but just about every tenor sax player of the day. It's truly amazing to see these two giants play the Thelonious Monk tune "Hackensack" together. What a gem of a performance! This was the same band that was touring Europe with Miles Davis at the time. Wonder where Miles was that day? The second part of the DVD is a little more well known to me.Of course that doesn't mean it's not incredible. The third part of the DVD captures the classic Impulse! Quartet late in it's evolution. The band gives a truly heartfelt and passionate performance. The sound quality throughout is very good and I really love this DVD. If you love Coltrane you simply cannot be without this one!

With this album and A Love Supreme I travel from one ecstatic experience to the next in Coltrane Land. The commentaries already posted pretty much cover the particulars.

The latest release in the Jazz Icons series of 3 Coltrane concerts, two in tv studios and one on a festival stage, comprise one of the best film records of any jazz performance on record. This is Coltrane at his absolute peak, he and his bandmates stoking the flames as one, each driving the other to another dimension. The first two, filmed in separate years in German tv studios feature two different bands to great effect, both brilliantly captured. The first has a classic element to it, a darkened space in rich black and white with an abundance of closeups of face and hands, a highlight being Paul Chambers amazing fingers at work. The last piece, though, from a Belgian outdoor stage, is a masterpiece of vision and sound. It's The Quartet in all its glory, filmed with vapor from their body heat condensing and pouring off of each of them in the cool night air. The illusion is not lost that they're virtually burning up, particularly with Elvin Jones stirring the cauldron. Not only was Coltrane a man possessed but this is a celluloid archive of a band possessed.

I can't say enough about this dvd, it makes up for the paucity of film when Trane was with Miles Davis. The whole thing is a classy package, great little booklet, tasty photography, a first class product. My next purchase from the Jazz Icon series may be the Art Blakey In '58 with Lee Morgan. I was able to preview that one on the JI website and it looks like another inspired performance.

The previous reviews have pretty much said it all, but all I want to say is that once you actually view these 3 sets - which are really three totally different experiences, you start to understand the true meaning of jazz. This was music played by incredible musicians for spiritual satisfaction. It's rare to witness that today.