Offering

John Coltrane (tenor sax), Alice Coltrane (piano) and Rashied Ali (drums). From the album Expression (1967).

Alice Coltrane was an American jazz pianist harpist, and composer, as well as the second wife of the renowned saxophonist John Coltrane and mother of the also saxophonist Ravi Coltrane. She spent most of her life looking for spirituality both in music and in her private life. She was the strict guardian of her husband’s legacy: nothing that had to do with him could be taken without her approval. She started studying classical music and the piano at age 7 and graduated from high school with a scholarship at the Detroit Institute of Technology.

From then on she began to play in churches, and clubs in Detroit where she performed bebop with Yusef Lateef and Kenny Burrell. In 1959 he traveled to Paris, received classes from Bud Powell and then returned to Detroit, where she formed her own trio and a duet with vibraphonist Terry Pollard. Later she moved to New York and during 1962 and 1963 he was a member of the Terry Gibs quartet. In 1965 she married John Coltrane replacing McCoy Tyner in his group a year later.

This composition is a clear example of experimentation, as in it only play Coltrane, his wife and Ali, without double bass. It consists entirely of a Coltrane solo that begins by exchanging melodic phrases with more complicated ones while Alice Coltrane and Ali accompany him freely. At some poin Coltrane is left alone with Ali and his discourse hardens repeating a motive in different ways, going up and down the musical scale and introducing overblowing in between. Then Alice Coltrane returns and her husband drops the motive and begins to play in a more frantic and impetuous way until he calms down slowly and reaches the end.