ANANTA: Spirit of Coltrane
Kissa Kissa is one of ten listening bars around the world to hear it first
Impulse! releases Miguel Atwood-Ferguson’s ANANTA: Spirit of Coltrane on Friday, October 30th. The night before, Kissa Kissa hosts one of the label’s Hi Fi Bar First Listen Sessions. The room opens at 5:30 PM on Thursday, October 29th, and there’s no cover.
Atwood-Ferguson made the record for John Coltrane’s hundredth birthday, on the label Coltrane recorded for in the last six years of his life. We’re playing it as part of Coltrane 100, our season of centennial nights at the kissa.
Before Spirit of Coltrane, Atwood-Ferguson wrote strings for Flying Lotus
Verve puts Atwood-Ferguson’s connection to Coltrane’s music at three decades. He was born in Topanga, California, in 1980, started violin at four and took a degree in viola performance at USC. Along with violin and viola he plays cello, bass and keys.
In 2009 he took a 60-piece orchestra into the Luckman in Los Angeles for Suite for Ma Dukes, which set J Dilla’s music for orchestra. Carlos Niño helped inspire it. A year later Atwood-Ferguson arranged and played the strings on five tracks of Flying Lotus’s Cosmogramma (Warp, 2010), “Do the Astral Plane” among them. Bonobo later used his strings on Fragments.
He and Niño put out Chicago Waves as a duo on International Anthem in 2020. His solo debut, Les Jardins Mystiques Vol. 1, followed on Brainfeeder in November 2023, 52 tracks and three and a half hours long.
Brandee Younger, Shabaka Hutchings and Azar Lawrence are in the 21-piece band
Atwood-Ferguson leads a 21-piece collective on Spirit of Coltrane, with Brandee Younger on harp, Jeff Parker on guitar, Joel Ross on vibraphone and Immanuel Wilkins on alto. Shabaka Hutchings turns up on “Giant Steps.”
In the 1970s Azar Lawrence played tenor in McCoy Tyner’s group. Tyner had left Coltrane’s quartet at the end of 1965. On this record Lawrence takes “My Favorite Things,” which Coltrane stretched past thirteen minutes on the 1961 Atlantic album of the same name.
Spirit of Coltrane takes seven tunes Coltrane recorded and adds one new one
The new one is “a force,” an original with words by the poet Aja Monet.
“Compassion” is the first single, and the least obvious pick of the seven. Coltrane recorded it in November 1965 for Meditations, with Pharoah Sanders and Rashied Ali added to the quartet. Meditations is on our shelf, and so are the original albums behind the other six tunes.
Verve describes the new “Giant Steps” as a contemplative ballad. The 1959 original is the take with Tommy Flanagan’s halting piano solo. Three more trace back to Impulse! and Atlantic records: “A Love Supreme, Pt. II” is “Resolution,” “After the Rain” comes from Impressions, and “Central Park West” is the short ballad from Coltrane’s Sound.
The needle drops on Spirit of Coltrane around 7:15
Warm Welcome happy hour runs from open until 7, with $2 off draft beer and wine by the glass. Then the record goes on our sound system.
At 8 PM Steve Holtje (@theloniousmood) takes over as guest selector. He has run ESP-Disk’ as label manager and artistic director since 2013. ESP-Disk’ put out Albert Ayler’s Spiritual Unity in 1965, and two years later Ayler played at Coltrane’s funeral.
Thursday, October 29th
Room opens at 5:30 PM. Needle down on Spirit of Coltrane around 7:15 PM. Steve Holtje from 8 PM. Free, no cover. 667 Franklin Avenue, Crown Heights.
Two nights before, on Tuesday, October 27th, we have an early listen of Chasin’ The Trane. The rest of the season is on the Coltrane 100 page, and everything else is in our upcoming listings.
Come listen
667 Franklin Avenue · Crown Heights, Brooklyn
No cover. No reservations required but always encouraged.
