Rating: 
Summary: I almost bought this book ...
Review: ... until the reviewer excitely said that it contained anecdotes and commentary from, among others, BONO. BONO????????????????????
Rating:
Summary: Perfect Gift for Jazz Lover
Review: A gorgeous book, it gracefully fuses art and literature into a beautiful form with a most compelling story. Any jazz fan will appreciate the depth of the writers research into the making of this historical album and into the mind of the master. The interviews are fresh and fascinating, the photos sublime. One of the best music books I've read in years.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect Gift for Jazz Lover
Review: A gorgeous book, it gracefully fuses art and literature into a beautiful form with a most compelling story. Any jazz fan will appreciate the depth of the writers research into the making of this historical album and into the mind of the master. The interviews are fresh and fascinating, the photos sublime. One of the best music books I've read in years.
Rating:
Summary: Great follow-up to his first book on "Kind of Blue"
Review: A wonderful book that lets you discover more about the classic album. Kahn not only lets us in on the recording session, but his interviews seem to bring out the best in the subject and that is the best part of both his books - The jazz musicians themselves telling us what it was like and what it meant.As for the previous reviewer who decided not to buy the book because of Bono. Bad move, because Bono is mentioned once or twice for about a sentence each time. In order to show the reach and influence of "A Love Supreme", Kahn asked some modern musicians what it meant to them. Bono was one of them. Highly Recommended!
Rating:
Summary: Great follow-up to his first book on "Kind of Blue"
Review: A wonderful book that lets you discover more about the classic album. Kahn not only lets us in on the recording session, but his interviews seem to bring out the best in the subject and that is the best part of both his books - The jazz musicians themselves telling us what it was like and what it meant. As for the previous reviewer who decided not to buy the book because of Bono. Bad move, because Bono is mentioned once or twice for about a sentence each time. In order to show the reach and influence of "A Love Supreme", Kahn asked some modern musicians what it meant to them. Bono was one of them. Highly Recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: More Love Than Light, But Worthwhile Nonetheless¿
Review: Ashley Khan's A Love Supreme is a useful book and is a must read for both casual and serious jazz fans and followers of John Coltrane. Khan gives us an entertaining view of the events leading to and surrounding the recording of this famous and important album. But as was the case in his book on Kind of Blue, his lack of technical understanding of the music leads to misinterpretations and faulty conclusions, and sometimes has him sounding more like a fan than a historian or critic. As a saxophonist and pianist who has studied Coltrane's music since the sixties, I feel a few points need to be clarified. A Love Supreme was a very important album, but much more so a spiritual statement of Coltrane as opposed to a musical statement. Coltrane had two powerful forces shaping him: his drive to explore new harmonic, rhythmic and modal territory, essentially bringing jazz up to date with the advances that had already occurred in modern classical music. At the same time, he was driven by a spiritual awakening and quest, and the two forces fused in what became a spiritual journey through music in his later years. This is why his later music is less intelligible to most of us: it mattered less as music, more as a spiritual statement for him. If you approach it simply as music, you probably won't get it. A Love Supreme came along right at the nexus of these two forces, and serves as the signature of his expression of his spiritual quest in his music. Importantly, he chose an accessible format and presentation for it, making it very easy to grasp for his many fans, and for many who did not share an interest in the complexity that embodied so much of his musical search, or who may simply have been attracted to it by the spiritual nature of the album. But as a musical statement, A Love Supreme is not as significant. Taken in the context of what came before it (the historic explorations of 1961, Crescent) and what came after it (John Coltrane Quartet Plays and Ascension) it is clearly just a way station. Throughout, the musical statement is notable in its simplicity: the four note motif of Acknowledgement, the single modulation and resolution of Resolution, the basic minor blues theme and structure of Pursuance. The ground covered in Psalm was much more effectively conveyed in Alabama on Coltrane Live at Birdland; Psalm is important more as a spiritual statement. Khan overlooks the best clue as to the musical significance of A Love Supreme, hidden in Crescent's liner notes. In them, Coltrane states that he is looking for a new kind of form, one in which theme and variations are more integrally combined. I remember reading this for the first time 1963 and thinking what a difficult objective he had set for himself, one that he masterfully achieved in Crescent, and which he continued in A Love Supreme. It is a direction he could have kept following productively for a while, had he chosen to challenge himself musically in that way. But he didn't. Instead, he chose to fuse his musical and spiritual journey in A Love Supreme, eventually exploring a path that was ultimately a musical dead end and led to the breakup of the classic quartet. It's been reported that toward the end of his life he spoke of reintroducing structure to his music, and this would have been the ultimate experiment for a man whose musical life was defined by experiments. But to say as Khan does that A Love Supreme was a musical culmination is simply not true, and an overstatement of its real significance. For a man of Coltrane's many gifts and directions, one musical culmination is not adequate. For the Coltrane who played within a harmonic framework, Crescent is probably the culmination: a fusion of theme and variation, harmonic complexity, emotional power. For the modal player, The John Coltrane Quartet Plays is the culmination. Here is the last frontier of modal playing in a format in which the soloist makes a statement, the drums keep time, the pianist plays related harmonies in tandem with the bass player linking the other three. (Indeed, Nature Boy gives us a hint of what's to come). The next stop is Ascension, in which Coltrane takes A Love Supreme one step further, loosening the harmonic and rhythmic constraints that would result in a statement that was spiritual first, musical second. (For the culmination of his free playing, my vote would be Ascension just for what it tried to do, though by its very nature, this type of music resists classification and comparison.) Now none of this denigrates the importance of A Love Supreme: indeed, the album is pivotal in Coltrane's musical and spiritual journey. But it adds some nuance to Khan's portrayal, which is while very useful, uninformed on a musical level. I also don't think it matters what rock and roll players (except for Donald Fagen, who is really a jazz composer) thought of A Love Supreme: their musical contribution to the period doesn't merit a vote. They liked it, great. So what. But faults aside, A Love Supreme is a book that all jazz fans should read, while they're listening to the transcendent gift to the human race that was John Coltrane.
Rating: 
Summary: Highly recommended for the uninitated
Review: But if you are a long time Coltrane fan, there is nothing new here. And the guy is not a musician, so expect the usual metaphores when trying to describe what is happening when Trane and company play. Since the actual master tape for the session runs a little over 60 minutes, there is not much to tell about the actual session itself, and many pages are devoted to where he was born, when he plays with Miles, what other people think about it (even that guy from the Byrds!) etc. But if you are just getting into jazz and into Trane, it is a good purchase. Good photos as well.
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Summary: Loved it
Review: Great music for those who love traditional jazz. Coltrane shows off his dexterity with the sax throughout this entire record.
Rating:
Summary: Loved it
Review: Great music for those who love traditional jazz. Coltrane shows off his dexterity with the sax throughout this entire record.
Rating:
Summary: love it
Review: I loved this book. In fact I was just ordering a few extra copies to give as gifts to serious jazz connoisseurs when I came across this drivel from Rich Fontana in the customer reviews section. I felt that as a fan of both the album and the book, I am compelled to reply to his assiduously prepared critique. In taking the author to task for being a fan, he misses the point of the book entirely: it is intended as a passionate celebration as much as carefully researched study. The author admits it unabashedly, Coltrane himself stated that an "emotional reaction" to music was paramount (in a '64 interview with Leonard Feather) and how else can one measure the effect and influence of a spiritual album without engaging the emotional? As stated clearly by the author, and Elvin Jones and McCoy Tyner - A Love Supreme was indeed a culmination of the quartet's three years together, not a culmination of Coltrane's career. Yes, Crescent was important and the author states that, even proposing it as an effective blueprint for the four-part suite that ALS is. Mr. Fontana's argument that his own perspective on Crescent is significantly different from the author's goes so far into the realm of picayune that - if it were deemed important enough to be published -- the vast majority of readers would end up scratching their heads and closing the book. (And while on the subject of hair-splitting, Crescent was recorded and released in 1964 - not 1963 - as Mr. Fontana maintains, an important matter in the hyper-charged Trane timeline.) As to Kahn's use (another small matter apparently missed by someone who relishes detail: the author's name is K-A-H-N) of rock n' rollers (and minimalists, and world musicians) in gauging the reach and influence of ALS. One of the primary intentions of the book is OBVIOUSLY to show how Coltrane managed to transcend stylistic and categorical boundaries - and still does. In the same way the old Blindfold interviews in Down Beat - in which say, Coltrane would praise Lester Young, leading certain fans to ferret out and enjoy old Count Basie recordings - today's far-flung media allows a Carlos Santana oreven the dreaded Bono to help point their fans to the music of Coltrane In the end, Mr. Fontana comes across as one who requires his music writing the same way: dry, analytical, single-minded. Jazz - and music in general - is NOT rocket science and should not be left to the cold, hard interpretation of one person (such as Mr. Fontana's own, opinion-as-fact portrayal of Coltrane's musical path.) In the virtual round-table Kahn has produced in this book, there is life and passion (and a helluva lot of great photographic images), powered by his own perceptions but mostly by the input of others: jazz musicians, jazz fans, even regular (G-d forbid -- non-jazz) listeners. He trusts his reader to figure it all out for him or herself, that somewhere among all those voices sits the general truth of music, Coltrane and A Love Supreme. I applaud Ashley Kahn for making a very readable, authoritative book that exudes love and respect for its subject. This kind of writing will do more to breathe life into the jazz continuum than the boring tomes that more often pass for jazz writing. I can't wait to see what Kahn comes up with next.
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