SUPER SONICS:

For Coltrane -- among the most revered saxophonists, then as now -- A Love Supreme also stood as a pinpoint moment in a changing picture. The mid-'60s were a period of hurtling evolution for him, as he pushed ever further into musical catharsis and away from the familiar moorings of jazz performance. He was seeking a direct spiritual expression that would set the standard for a cadre of improvisers coming up behind him, like fellow tenor heralds Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp, who both appeared on his free-jazz landmark, Ascension,in June of '65.

That July, a month after the Ascension sessions, Coltrane and his quartet played the only widely known performance of A Love Supreme, at the Festival Jazz d'Antibes in Juan-les-Pins, France. The set was included on a deluxe reissue of the album in 2002; this moment has also been preserved through some brief footage available online, which can feel almost miraculous to behold.

The Antibes recording has stood as the lone living document of Coltrane's suite -- until today, when Impulse! announced the October release of A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle. Recorded at the end of a weeklong residency at The Penthouse by Joe Brazil, one of Coltrane's trusted friends, it presents this music in a glorious new light, and with remarkably clear sound. (Brazil used the club system, two microphones and an Ampex reel-to-reel, and then preserved the tapes for nearly half a century, as if guarding a Holy Grail. They were found in his archive after his death in 2008.)

The fact that Coltrane performed A Love Supreme in Seattle in 1965 has long been known to a small circle of dwindling eyewitnesses and deep Trane-ologists -- like jazz historian Lewis Porter, who wrote one of the essays in the new album's liner notes. But because there was never any audio documentation, the fact was never more than a footnote in A Love Supreme lore.

Tweet   @brothersjudd