''Cosmic Music'' is a

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

album by

John Coltrane John William Coltrane (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of br ...

and

Alice Coltrane Alice Coltrane (' McLeod; August 27, 1937January 12, 2007), also known by her adopted Sanskrit name Turiyasangitananda, was an American jazz musician and composer, and in her later years a swamini. An accomplished pianist and one of the few har ...

released after John Coltrane's death. John Coltrane only plays on two tracks, "Manifestation" and "Reverend King".

Background

In late January 1966, Coltrane and his group, which included saxophonist

Pharoah Sanders Pharoah Sanders (born Ferrell Lee Sanders; October 13, 1940 – September 24, 2022) was an American jazz saxophonist. Known for his overblowing, harmonic, and multiphonic techniques on the saxophone, as well as his use of "sheets of sound", San ...

, pianist

(

McCoy Tyner Alfred McCoy Tyner (December 11, 1938March 6, 2020) was an American jazz piano, jazz pianist and composer known for his work with the John Coltrane Quartet (from 1960 to 1965) and his long solo career afterwards. He was an NEA Jazz Masters, NEA ...

had left the group at the end of the previous year), bassist

Jimmy Garrison James Emory Garrison (March 3, 1934 – April 7, 1976) was an American jazz double bassist. He is best remembered for his association with John Coltrane from 1961 to 1967. Career Garrison was raised in both Miami and Philadelphia where he l ...

, bassist / clarinetist

Donald Rafael Garrett Donald Rafael Garrett (February 28, 1932, El Dorado, ArkansasAugust 14, 1989, Champaign, Illinois) was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist who played double-bass, clarinet, and flute. Biography Garrett, who preferred to be called Rafael, was ...

, and drummers

Elvin Jones Elvin Ray Jones (September 9, 1927 – May 18, 2004) was an American jazz drummer of the post-bop era. Most famously a member of John Coltrane's quartet, with whom he recorded from late 1960 to late 1965, Jones appeared on such widely celebrate ...

and

Rashied Ali Rashied Ali, born Robert Patterson (July 1, 1933 – August 12, 2009) was an American free jazz and avant-garde drummer best known for playing with John Coltrane in the last years of Coltrane's life. Biography Early life Patterson was born and ...

, arrived in San Francisco for a two-week gig at the

Jazz Workshop The Jazz Workshop was a jazz music nightclub in San Francisco, located in North Beach at 473 Broadway Street. Numerous live recordings were made there, during its heyday in the 1960s. As of 2016, the space is occupied by a bar and music venue cal ...

, sharing the bill with

Thelonious Monk Thelonious Sphere Monk (, October 10, 1917 – February 17, 1982) was an American jazz pianist and composer. He had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including " 'Round Midnight", "B ...

's quartet. During the first week of their visit, Jones resigned from the band, joining

Duke Ellington Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous jazz orchestra from 1923 through the rest of his life. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based ...

's group, and was replaced by Ray Appleton. Garrett also left for part of the gig. On February 2, the group (without Garrett, and with Appleton substituting for Jones), visited Coast Recorders in San Francisco, where they recorded a number of tracks, including "Manifestation" and "Reverend King." "Manifestation" features solos by John Coltrane on tenor sax, Sanders on piccolo (returning later on tenor sax), and Alice Coltrane on piano. (It was Alice Coltrane's first recording with her husband.) "Reverend King" begins and ends with chants of "Aum-Mani-Pad-Mi-Hum" and features a solo by Sanders on tenor, as well as one of John Coltrane's few recorded appearances on bass clarinet. Tapes of these two tracks remained in the Coltranes' house until January 1968, roughly six months after John Coltrane's death, when Alice Coltrane decided to pair them with two tracks she recorded with her own group, "Lord, Help Me to Be" and "The Sun". These were her first recordings as a leader, and feature bassist Garrison and drummer

Ben Riley Benjamin Alexander Riley Jr. (July 17, 1933 – November 18, 2017) was an American jazz drummer known for his work with Thelonious Monk, as well as Alice Coltrane, Stan Getz, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Ahmad Jamal, and as a member of the group Sp ...

, with Sanders appearing on tenor sax on "Lord, Help Me to Be" and briefly on flute on "The Sun". "The Sun" begins with a recording of John Coltrane and Sanders chanting "May there be peace and love and perfection throughout all creation," and ends with John Coltrane's voice saying "Alice?" Both pieces were later released as bonus tracks on the CD reissue of Alice Coltrane's first solo album, ''

A Monastic Trio ''A Monastic Trio'' is the first solo album by Alice Coltrane. It was recorded in 1968 at the John Coltrane Home in Dix Hills, New York, and was released later that year by Impulse! Records. On the album, Coltrane appears on piano and harp, and is ...

''. These four tracks were initially released as ''Cosmic Music'' on Coltrane Records in late 1968. However, representatives from

Impulse! Records Impulse! Records (occasionally styled as "¡mpulse! Records" and "¡!") is an American jazz record company and label established by Creed Taylor in 1960. John Coltrane was among Impulse!'s earliest signings. Thanks to consistent sales and positi ...

soon contacted Alice Coltrane, offering to include her as an Impulse! artist and suggesting that ''Cosmic Music'' be re-released on their label. She recalled: "Once osmic Musicwas available... the Impulse people said, 'Your ideas are fine, the music is good, but let us produce it. Let us have control of the artwork, and we'll put out a beautiful cover and music that's in your hands, and it'll be a very nice album and we also can get it out throughout the world.' There was no sense of someone coercing or whatever, or even trying to persuade me. It was just, 'If you would like, we can produce it very nicely for you.' And it was!" The album was reissued by Impulse! in 1969 with new cover art and with the co-credit "produced by Coltrane Records." Two of the remaining tracks from the February 2, 1966 session appeared on ''

Infinity Infinity is that which is boundless, endless, or larger than any natural number. It is often denoted by the infinity symbol . Since the time of the ancient Greeks, the philosophical nature of infinity was the subject of many discussions amo ...

'' with extensive editing and overdubbing, and one of the tracks also appeared on '' Jupiter Variation''.

Reception

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

reviewer Michael G. Nastos called ''Cosmic Music'' "emphatic, surging, and sometimes unfathomable." Thom Jurek, also writing for

, wrote "While this record holds up quite well... it is still a minor Impulse album compared to some of the saxophonist's master works."

John Corbett John Joseph Corbett Jr. (born May 9, 1961) is an American actor and country music singer. On television, he is best known for his roles as Chris Stevens on ''Northern Exposure'' (1990–1995), Aidan Shaw on ''Sex and the City'' (2000–2003), ...

included the album in his book ''Vinyl Freak: Love Letters to a Dying Medium'', referring to "Manifestation" as "beautiful energy music, as Coltrane knew how to craft it" and expressing admiration for "Reverend King"'s "gloriously ecstatic bass clarinet — another underdocumented facet of Trane’s recorded history — and... joyous group interaction by the full ensemble."

Track listing

Personnel

(tracks 1 and 3) —

tenor saxophone The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor and the alto are the two most commonly used saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B (while th ...

bass clarinet The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B (meaning it is a transposing instrument on which a written C sounds as B), but it plays notes an octave bel ...

—

piccolo The piccolo ( ; Italian for 'small') is a half-size flute and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. Sometimes referred to as a "baby flute" the modern piccolo has similar fingerings as the standard transverse flute, but the so ...

flute The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...

—

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

— bass *

(tracks 1 and 3) —

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

* Ray Appleton (tracks 1 and 3) —

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

(tracks 2 and 4) —

Notes

References

{{Authority control Impulse! Records albums John Coltrane albums Alice Coltrane albums Albums published posthumously 1966 albums