Two tracks, " Naima " and "Syeeda's Song Flute", are respectively named after Coltrane's wife at the time and her daughter, whom he adopted. A third, " Mr. P.C. ", takes its name from the initials of bassist Paul Chambers, who played on the album. A fourth, "Cousin Mary", is named in honor of Mary Lyerly, Coltrane's younger cousin.
Coltrane's improvisation exemplifies the melodic phrasing that came to be known as sheets of sound, and features his explorations into third-related chord movements that came to be known as Coltrane changes. The Giant Steps chord progression consists of a distinctive set of chords that create key centers a major third apart.
Giant Steps is the fifth studio album by jazz musician John Coltrane as leader, released in 1960 on Atlantic Records, catalogue SD 1311. This would be the first album as leader for his new label Atlantic Records.
The Giant Steps chord progression consists of a distinctive set of chords that create key centers a major third apart. Jazz musicians ever since have used it as a practice piece, its difficult chord changes presenting a "kind of ultimate harmonic challenge", and serving as a gateway into modern jazz improvisation.
"Giant Steps" was composed and recorded during Coltrane's 1959 sessions for Atlantic Records, his first for the label. The original recording features Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Paul Chambers on double bass, Tommy Flanagan on piano, and Art Taylor on drums.
John ColtraneGenresHard bop modal jazz free jazz avant-garde jazzOccupation(s)Musician composer bandleaderInstrumentsTenor saxophone soprano saxophone alto saxophone flute bass clarinetYears active1945–196718 more rows
John Coltrane, 1926-1967: The Famous Saxophone Player Helped Make Modern Jazz Popular Around the WorldColtrane began playing saxophone when he was thirteen years old. ... The talented musician experimented with new ways to write and perform jazz music. ... One of his most famous song is called "My Favorite Things."
What Instrument Did Coltrane Help To Re Introduce To Jazz? It is also important to mention that Coltrane re-lived the soprano saxophone as a solo instrument in jazz.
PianoJohn Lewis (pianist)John LewisGenresJazzOccupation(s)Musician, composer, arrangerInstrumentsPianoYears active1940s–1990s5 more rows
JazzJohn Coltrane / Genre
John Coltrane initially played a Selmer Super Balanced Action tenor, before switching to a Selmer Mark VI, with which he recorded his masterpiece, A Love Supreme.
John William Coltrane is one of the most influential jazz musicians to ever play, and today remains even more relevant than during his life. A saxophonist, he was initially drawn to the popular jazz formats of bebop and hard bop, before eventually becoming one of the guiding forces behind free jazz.
John Coltrane was an acclaimed American saxophonist, bandleader and composer, becoming an iconic figure of jazz in the 20th century with albums like 'Giant Steps,' 'My Favorite Things' and 'A Love Supreme. '
The piano, bass, and drums comprise the rhythm section; their primary role is to accompany and provide support for the horn players as well as each other; they may also improvise solos.
Ironically, just as Coltrane was reaching a height of chordal complexity in “Giant Steps,” Davis was pursuing simplification through what is called modal organization of music, a system in which compositions are based on scales (often called modes), not chords.
Armstrong had been playing an earlier version of a Selmer trumpet since 1932. Even though he believed you could play a trumpet for a long time, he had the habit of playing his trumpets for approximately five years before he passed it on as a gift to a friend or colleague.
Born on 23 September 1926, John William Coltrane studied music in Philadelphia and initially came under the spell of Charlie Parker. When he got his first call from the big-time, an invitation from trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie to join his ensemble in 1949, he would later say he felt ready for the challenge. Gradually, however, he was disabused of any false confidence. “What I didn’t know with Diz was that what I had to do was really express myself,” he confessed. “You can only play so much of another man [Parker].”
Coltrane’s solos have been transcribed and analysed by countless scholars, he has been the subject of hundreds and hundreds of academic dissertations and there have been seven biographies of him in the English language alone, the most recent Lewis Porter’s definitive John Coltrane: His Life and Music. Indeed, so much has been written about Coltrane that it might appear you need a doctorate of music to go anywhere near his recordings.
But in April 1957, Davis sacked Coltrane along with his drummer Philly Joe Jones because of problems associated with their drug addiction. Tenor saxophonist Charles Lloyd relates how Cannonball Adderley told him how Coltrane had overdosed in San Francisco while with Davis. “Somehow Philly Joe and Paul [Chambers, Davis’ bassist] pulled Trane through. He was very sick, but Cannonball said Trane quit his habit right there and that was it.” There are other reports, by saxophonist Jackie McLean in Jazz Times, that in breaking his addiction pattern without the help of substitute drugs such as methadone he was turning up for work with Davis sick, dishevelled and resorting to drink. After an engagement at the Café Bohemia in New York, Davis could take no more and let him go.
However, Coltrane’s first sessions for Atlantic on the 26 March sessions remained unissued until 1974, but at least they yield first versions of ‘Giant Steps’ and ‘Naima’. The key track is ‘Giant Steps’, which would subsequently provide the title track of the album. Here, with pianist Cedar Walton, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Lex Humphries, the tempo is slower than the final issued take, and sees Coltrane’s conscientious application of patterns, most notably a i-ii-iii-v grouping (equivalent to do, re, mi, so in Tonic sol-fa) which in both root and inverted forms appears numerous times throughout his solo – indeed, on the master take Coltrane would use the pattern in root form some 35 times.
What this collaboration held out musically for Coltrane became clearer in 2006 with the release of a newly discovered live performance by this group, Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall, recorded on 29 November 1957. Comprising eight Monk originals and a performance of ‘Sweet and Lovely’, it reveals how Monk let Coltrane solo at length, creating passages of intricate and original patterns and squalls of semi-quavers.
Historically, Coltrane appears as the link between the song-based techniques of Charlie Parker and the more abstract “free jazz” approach of Ornette Coleman. But he is also something more. Coltrane embraced the notion of continuous artistic evolution, his questing musical curiosity forging a musical path that celebrated musical style as a process, not an arrival point.
Less than a month after Kind of Blue was recorded in 1959, John Coltrane first entered the studio to make what in many ways was that mighty album’s equal: Giant Steps. Stuart Nicholson tells the full story of one of the greatest albums in jazz history