Stellar Regions
Occupation
- Tenor Saxophone: John Coltrane
- Piano: Alice Coltrane
- Bass: Jimmy Garrison
- Drums: Rashied Ali
Stellar Regions is a posthumous publication of John Coltrane. The jazz album features all the tracks that were recorded at a recording session on 15 February 1967.
The album
Coltrane had the opportunity to regularly go into the studio and record due to its economic success. On February 15, 1967, he gathered in the studio of Rudy Van Gelder not the quintet, with whom he performed at this time, but worked there alone with his rhythm section: In addition to his wife, Alice Coltrane had Rashied Ali on drums and Jimmy Garrison on bass with. Some of the songs covered by their almost European sense of tonality ( Jimmy's Fashion ), in contrast to Coltrane 's usual way of working with the blues idiom. Garrison used his bass often as string instrument, which was unusual for him and Coltrane, leading in some places to an orchestral feel like Seraphic Light. There are also some blues - oriented and atonal pieces.
The pieces are short and clearly structured. Some critics and musicians ( including the British saxophonist Evan Parker and Coltrane biographer Lewis Porter) are of the opinion that Coltrane plays an alto saxophone on both versions of the play Trane Sonic what he is after 1946 long time no more, only on its Japan - tour in 1966 did again. Also, the Coltrane - disco graph and writer of the liner notes of the album, Dave A. Wild, has endorsed this view.
The tape with the recording was rediscovered in 1994 by his widow, Alice and his son Ravi Coltrane, as they sighted the Coltrane taken with home recordings from the last months of life. Alice Coltrane is also responsible for the title names of eight pieces of the album, as well as the material has not been published before. The piece was titled Offering of Coltrane in July 1967, and selected by him to appear on Coltrane's album expression; a duo version of the composition, which has been named by Alice Coltrane Stellar Regions was already under the title Venus previously published (1974 on the saxophone - drums duo album Interstellar Space ) ..
Effect story
The album was highly respected by the critics: In the downbeat, it received the highest rating ( five stars) and has been praised as " incredibly fresh". Scott Yanow gave him in AllMusicGuide 4 1/ 2 points. For the avant-garde magazine The Wire in 1995 it was one of the albums of the year. According to Jazz Times Coltrane was again a musical " transition " With the different material published on the album is also the question of whether Coltrane free jazz of Ascension continued or the development would have elsewhere directed towards presented .. This question was rejected, for example, of Konrad Heidkamp (in his review of the album for the time):
» " Stellar Regions " does not carry the core of a possible future of jazz. It is the presence of a cosmos that only you have to touch them to put all the days of music aside. What is found separately otherwise, here is one: love - in the form of anthemic melody; Longing - as a quest to find the modal ramifications to a tone; Despair - in the harsh tone, the screams. "
The title
All the compositions were written by John Coltrane.