This is the third of our Cosmic Jazz tributes to saxophonist John Coltrane, born 100 years ago on 23 September 1926. Here at Cosmic Jazz, we’ve been celebrating the life and music of one of the most influential figures in all of jazz. In this, our final show, we focus once more on the breadth of Coltrane’s music and his lasting influence on other musicians from Michael Brecker to Flying Lotus.
John Coltrane – Dahomey Dance from Olé Coltrane
Olé Coltrane was recorded just two days after Africa/Brass with the quartet back in Rudy van Gelder’s New Jersey studio. Coltrane was owed one last album for his old label Atlantic, and he brought along Freddie Hubbard and Eric Dolphy from the previous session along with bassists Reggie Workman and Art Davis to complete the lineup. Whilst reviews have not always been kind to Olé Coltrane, writer and critic Jeff Terich noted that You can point to any moment of Coltrane’s playing on Olé and it would pretty much seal up why this hovers among the highest tier of the best John Coltrane albums. But it’s how the entire ensemble works in harmony to create a stunning whole that this belongs not just in the ranks of the best John Coltrane albums, but jazz’s greatest albums as well. Even though this was one of the first Coltrane albums Neil bought, he thinks that this over-eggs the pudding somewhat. However, you take anything away from Reggie Workman’s irresistible walking bassline which holds down the central groove of Dahomey Dance over its near 11 minute length. Whilst the tune hasn’t been sampled [“Why not?” asks Neil], this version of the tune appeared on Tom Scott’s 1974 album recorded with his LA Express group.
Michael Brecker – Slings and Arrows from Tales From the Hudson
We make no apology for returning to Michael Brecker’s excellent Tales From the Hudson album from 1996. This is perhaps Brecker’s most directly Coltrane-influenced record with his ‘outside’ playing really to the fore on the opening tune Slings and Arrows. The album won Brecker two Grammy awards and is one of his finest albums on the Impulse! label with an all-star line-up of Brecker on tenor saxophone, Joey Calderazzo on piano, Pat Metheny on guitar, Dave Holland on bass and Jack DeJonette on drums. Over a four‑decade career, he recorded widely in jazz and popular music and appeared on more than 900 albums as a leader and sideman. Tales From the Hudson is a great place to start.
John Coltrane – After the Rain from Impressions
And we’re back to 1963 and the classic quartet with one of Coltrane’s most lyrical performances. After the Rain appears on Impressions, an album that contains live tracks recorded at the Village Vanguard in 1961 and Van Gelder studio tracks recorded in 1963 – including After the Rain. Drummer on this session was Roy Haynes who provides a noticeably lighter touch than Elvin Jones – and it really suits the reflective atmosphere of the tune. After the Rain is now something of a jazz standard with versions by John McLaughlin, Teodross Avery, Kenny Garrett and – of course – Pharoah Sanders. And, to end, here’s a short meditative take by guitarist Rob Luft.
Flying Lotus – German Haircut from Cosmogramma
Steven Ellison (Flying Lotus) is the great-nephew of Alice Coltrane (John Coltrane’s wife), making John Coltrane his great-uncle by marriage. Ellison frequently channels this familial avant-garde and spiritual jazz heritage into his experimental electronic and hip-hop production Indeed, the track Comet Course on his Los Angeles album (2008) incorporates spoken vocal samples and spiritual motifs from The Sun which featured on the Cosmic Music album by John Coltrane and Alice Coltrane, released posthumously in 1968. Neil chose a tune from Cosmogramma (2010) which includes a saxophone contribution from Ellison’s cousin Ravi Coltrane. The music comes full circle…
Pharoah Sanders – Memories of J W Coltrane from Live at the East
No one interprets Coltrane like Pharoah Sanders but here he is with an original composition from his excellent Live at the East album, recorded in NYC 1971. The whole album is suffused with the spirituality of Sanders’ mentor and greatest influence – as noted by writer and activist Harmony Holiday’s article in the art magazine Frieze where she writes: Coltrane’s spirit re-enters the earth plane through Pharoah and they have a conversation in brushes, whispers and a percussive bellow. Joe Bonner’s accompaniment on piano stands out, responding to Coltrane’s haunting presence with delight and meditative frenzy. This is a piece of music that heals and absolves and discloses the urgency of that reconciliation, the triumph of the heart that call and response between worlds is in Black musical tradition… This song heals by teaching us how to stand up and dance among ghosts, how to transition from haunted to empowered by simply deciding to raise the dead and let them speak, celebrating their lives through ours. That pretty much sums up the evocative presence of Coltrane in the three long tracks that are the basis of this record.
Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin – Let Us Go Into the House of the Lord from Love Devotion Surrender
What memories! Neil bought the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s Birds of Fire on its release in 1973 and followed that with the collaboration between guitarists John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana recorded just a few months earlier. The album includes a version of A Love Supreme but for Neil it’s the take on the traditional spiritual Let Us Go Into the House of the Lord that works best. Larry Young’s organ contribution here is particularly noteworthy – Paul Stump, in his biography of John McLaughlin Go Ahead John, wrote: with its overlapping flurries of triplets, [it] is a moment of pure genius, worthy of mention in its own right, a musical equivalent of a swarm of surreally coloured butterflies. It’s also worth listening to the version that also forms the centrepiece on Harold Budd’s ambient album The Pavilion of Dreams along with the Pharoah Sanders take on his 1970 album Summun Bukmun Umyun (Deaf Dumb Blind) which was probably the inspiration for its inclusion on Love Devotion Surrender.
John Coltrane – Offering from Offering: Live at Temple University
In 1966 John Coltrane toured Japan with his then new quintet – Pharoah Sanders on tenor sax, Alice Coltrane on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Rashied Ali on drums. This remarkable tour in which the group played dramatically extended versions of some of Coltrane’s favourites (including a 57 minute take of My Favourite Things!) was followed by more live dates in San Francisco and New York. Towards the end of the summer, Garrison – who had played with Coltrane since 1961 and was the last link with the classic quartet – left the group. There were also increasing concerns about Coltrane’s health and he began to cut down on his live performances until this memorable November date at Temple University, Philadelphia – Coltrane’s home city. The audience included university students, members of the black radical organisation The Revolutionary Action Movement, old friends of Coltrane, and local fans and musicians – including the 18-year-old Michael Brecker. The show was recorded for broadcast but the complete tapes didn’t appear on record until 2014. The full personnel on this extraordinary music isn’t completely clear but Alice Coltrane, little known bass player Sonny Johnson, possibly Jimmy Garrison and also Rashied Ali on drums were supplemented by batá drummer Algie DeWitt, Omar Ali, Robin Kenyatta and Charles Brown all playing percussion. To this already large, percussion-heavy group, Coltrane added two local alto saxophonists, Arnold Joyner and Steven Knoblauch who sat in and took a solo each. Their presence was consistent with Coltrane’s habit of inviting younger, relatively unknown musicians to participate, but this was surely one of the most unusual Coltrane groups ever to take the stage. We’ve selected the relatively restrained title track, but on Leo Coltrane vocalises while beating his chest. Rashied Ali stated: People really thought he’d lost his mind then. He wasn’t even playing anything recognisable with the horn. Ali recalled asking Coltrane Trane, man, why are you doing that, beating on your chest and howling in the microphone? Coltrane responded Man, I can’t find nothing else to play on the horn. Whether anecdotal or not, Coltrane was clearly at an artistic crossroads that is reflected in more recent evaluations of this extraordinary concert. Writing for AllMusic, Matt Collar stated that the group seems to have codified the spiritually infused free jazz, modal, and Indian raga influences Coltrane had been exploring since the early ’60s, and describes them as an ensemble of like-minded musicians unified as much by spiritual concerns as creative ones. Collar concludes: though we will never know where Coltrane would have taken his music had he lived, Offering works as a live culmination of Coltrane’s musical journey, a homecoming and spiritual communion with the deep, creative forces that drove him right until the end of his life and, based on the music here, one can only assume beyond. A few months later, in July 1967, Coltrane died from the liver cancer that, unacknowledged, had plagued his final years.
More from Cosmic Jazz soon.
Neil is listening to…
- Outkast – My Favorite Things
- Aki Takase – Monologue
- Brian Auger – Maiden Voyage
- Miles Davis – Tutu
- War – The World is a Ghetto (Special Disco Mix)
Derek is listening to…
- The Mighty Sparrow – Memories
- The Mighty Sparrow – Congo Man
- The Mighty Sparrow – Good Morning Mr. Walker
- The Mighty Sparrow – Maria
- The Mighty Sparrow – Big Bamboo
As Kevin le Gendre’s sleeve notes record in the Jazzman Trane tribute album from which this (and other) tunes come, few artists produce work that is so moving it’s considered sacred. But not only does Coltrane’s music have a uniquely spiritual dimension, there is even an 
The influence of Coltrane’s sound has spread far and wide over the years. The little-known Swiss saxophonist Gilles Torrent only picked up the soprano saxophone in his twenties but spent the next eleven years studying Coltrane’s approach. The result can be clearly heard in this superb extended title track from his 1985 album with its echoes of Lonnie’s Lament, My Favorite Things and more. The music’s title actually references the mythical drowned city of Atlantis which seems a suitably Coltrane-like title to choose. Once again, this excellent track appears on the Jazzman tribute compilation but if you can find a copy of the original Terre Engloutie album you’ll be lucky. There are currently two available on 
Our final visit to the excellent Jazzman compilation is another favourite Coltrane tune, Naima. This much-covered composition first appeared on his Giant Steps album, recorded for the Atlantic label in 1959 and featuring the epic title track along with Countdown and Mr. P.C. – both tunes that have become standards in their own right. This perhaps surprising version comes from organist Brother Jack McDuff and dates from 1981. As the title might suggest, the album features a Baptist Church choir but here the funky backbeat and Fender Rhodes from McDuff is augmented by sax and guitar solos to create a rather unexpected but chilled vibe.
We had hoped to present a full show of John Coltrane tunes selected by Neil but this breaks the MixCloud condition that you cannot present a show featuring one artist only. This reasonably prevents the upload of entire albums, although in our show we made thoughtful selections from different albums. We will look at other ways to celebrate the John Coltrane centenary but for this show, we mix Coltrane tunes with artists known to have admired him. Crescent is from the eponymous album (1964) by what is referred to as the Classic John Coltrane Quartet – John Coltrane on tenor and soprano sax, McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. It was the album released before the celebrated and influential A Love Supreme and points towards that direction. Nat Hentoff in the liner notes refers to the album as disciplined lyricism and notes the quote from Ornette Coleman that Coltrane is the most lyrical player I ever heard. Crescent opens in a melancholy mood and is imbued throughout with contemplative intensity and the aforementioned disciplined lyricism.
Derek used to think My Favorite Things was a somewhat ordinary and lifeless tune written by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein III. Then he heard a version by John Coltrane which transformed his impression of the work – a vinyl recording from the 1963 Newport Jazz Festival which was to become the first Coltrane record he bought. CJ used the 2007 CD version which probably sounds better than that now-worn vinyl copy. There are many other Coltrane takes of My Favorite Things available on disc including the initial studio version from 1961 along with other live versions – One Down, One Up Live at the Half Note; The Unissued Seattle Broadcast; Offering: Live at Temple University. Coltrane appeared four times at the groundbreaking and influential Newport Jazz festival (but only the 1963 and 1965 performances were recorded) and he played many festivals – but for Ashley Kahn, author of 
John Coltrane has not been the only jazz musician to improve a Rodgers and Hammerstein tune by changing a tune into a superb jazz number. The late US vocalist, guitarist and composer Cassandra Wilson who died on 01 September 2026, was among those who did it too. Wilson, composed a significant proportion of her own material, but was also adept at transforming and re-interpreting the works of others. Flexibility, warmth, conviction, timing and a sultry contralto are some of the words that have been used to describe her in recent days. Shall We Dance opens her 1988 album Blue Skies and has a blues feel to it and the blues were later prominent in her 1993 Blue Note Records album Blue Light Til Dawn. She was labelled a jazz musician but her music incorporated so much more. Blue Skies included Mulgrew Miller on piano, Lonnie Plaxico on acoustic bass and Terri Lyne Carrington on drums. Among those offered special thanks is saxophonistSteve Coleman, with whom Cassandra Wilson co-founded the influential M-Base Collective.
We begin with a new album from drummer Jake Long and his outfit Your Brother’s Keeper, featuring saxophonist elder statesman Gary Bartz, Released just a couple of months ago, the new band is born out of previous project Maisha (featured several times previously on CJ), with this first album Where Rivers Meet appearing on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood label. There’s electronics, dub, funk and more than a touch of spiritual jazz on this mix and, whilst the record is patchy, there’s some great playing from Bartz here – a saxophonist whose career now spans more than five decades. He emerged performing with Charles Mingus, Max Roach and Art Blakey before joining Miles Davis during the trumpeter’s electrifying early-1970s period. Bartz soon became a defining figure of the spiritual jazz movement through his celebrated NTU Troop recordings, creating a body of work that continues to resonate across generations of musicians and listeners alike. Perhaps the most celebrated of those 1970s records is his excellent live at Montreux recording from 1973, and featuring the epic 
From the ever-inventive Edition Records comes a new Chris Potter record – his seventh for the label. It’s a really interesting one too as there’s a clear theme: it’s the story of John Brown, the Christian Abolitionist who saw slavery as sin and, horrified by the state-backed violence of the pro-slavery armed forces, finally chose violence after years of facilitating the Underground Railway to assist escaped slaves. He was subsequently the first man in the States to be hung for treason. It’s a story that holds the complexity and tragedy of America in one moment, Potter says. It felt important to engage with it now. Potter’s approach is typically eclectic, with the opening title track a statement of intense intent, followed by the bluesy groove of Osawatomie Brown, with its echoes of Marvin Gaye in the bass line and its tough tenor stance. The violin is still a rare instrument in jazz but on this record Sara Caswell is a vital force. Guitarist Bill Frisell laces it together, sometimes resonating with his African heroes like Ali Farka Touré or rocking out as of old. Into Africa begins with a typically inventive tenor solo before some terrific ensemble playing (including some lovely bass clarinet from Rane Moore. All of Potter’s huge output is worth exploring but this new album is right up there with the best – check it out now.
Skerik (or Eric Walton) is a tenor and baritone saxophonist from Seattle, Washington who uses a range of electronics and loops to create a unique sound. 061725 is his first fully fledged ambient album in a 30 year career and across six tracks he creates a series of dreamlike states, full of sonic textures that have come to be called saxophonics. An influence on this unique sound was Eno’s Music for Airports (1978) which his mother played around the house while he was growing up. Later, he was introduced to ECM Records and artists like Eberhard Weber, so deepening his connection to spacious, atmospheric compositions. You can listen to and buy the album 
Ah – now Neil has had this record since it first appeared on vinyl in 1973 and he’s played this 1 minute and 22 seconds of aural perfection innumerable times, every time marvelling at Carlos Ward’s gorgeous alto saxophone melody. CJ listeners will recall a similar enthusiasm for Ward’s more extended but equally beautiful solo on Abdullah Ibrahim’s The Wedding from the African Marketplace album. We didn’t acknowledge Ward’s death in January 2026 but this vastly under-rated alto saxophonist deserves much more attention than he received in his lifetime. He featured on many albums over the years although released only four under his own name. Ward was born in Panama City but moved with his family to Seattle where he began to study the clarinet. Joining the US military, Ward was stationed in Germany where he met and played with Albert Mangelsdorff and Karl Berger. In 1965, before returning to the United States, he met and spent time with Don Cherry who was playing with Abdullah Ibrahim, Ward went on to record 11 albums with Ibrahim including the superb The Journey (1978) and Water From an Ancient Well (1983). Ward was also featured on John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle, recorded in 1965 and issued in 2021 – it’s one of only two live recordings of 
Recording completely solo is a real challenge in jazz. Interaction between musicians is usually at the heart of the form but (as we’ve just heard with Skerik) it’s not always necessary. Of the Earth is built around multiple loops across a range of different reed and wind instruments. Shabaka is back on his A record built entirely from your own parts inevitably puts composition and editing in the foreground. The structural foundation of Of the Earth is the loop – rhythms of various shapes and sizes tumble out of silence and whirl in place, and when Shabaka lands on an interesting pattern he’s not afraid to let it play on its own for a few bars. More than this, Shabaka raps on the album: I’ve never rapped before but was actually inspired by André 3000’s courage in exploring new dimensions with fearlessness and sincerity; I decided to find my voice on this album. It’s often difficult to know where each tune is going – but that’s part of the delight of this album and surprises abound. Step Lightly even sounds like a bunch of school recorders for the first few bars before a kind of soca rhythm and metallic chimes kick in and the tune goes in a different direction. Worth an exploration – track it down 
This neglected album has just appeared in a Tone Poet edition on Blue Note. Sadly that means parting with around £36 (€41) unless you can track down the original 1974 copy. However, unless you’re wedded to an original pressing, the Tone Poet reissue is the one to go for. This is a superb sounding reissue has a gatefold sleeve and excellent notes by Syd Schwartz – it’s well worth checking out. Pianist McCoy Tyner had been increasingly looking to Mother Africa for inspiration on his Blue Note recordings of the late-1960s on pieces like African Village and Message from the Nile. With Asante (recorded in in 1970), he brought those influences to the fore with a powerful set that’s rooted in the swirling percussive rhythmic bed laid by drummer Billy Hart and percussionist Mtumé. Buster Williams delivers those characteristic fat basslines, and guitarist Ted Dunbar is much more than just rhythm accompaniment. Alto saxophonist Andrew White (who was an equally good bass player on Weather Report’s Sweetnighter album as evidenced by his playing 
Vibraphonist Moullier is one of those random discoveries made by Neil as he explores new online sounds – but he has also appeared earlier on an Cosmic Jazz show this year when we featured the new Edition Records album by Ben Wendel. BaRcoDe included Moullier along with two other leading vibes players we know well on CJ – Joel Ross and Patricia Brennan. Ceiba is Moullier’s sixth album as a leader and the third release with his quartet – Lex Korten on piano, Rick Rosato on bass, and Jongkuk Kim on drums. The album also includes guest percussionist Keita Ogawa on two tracks. All original compositions, Ceiba is full of strong melodies and really effective interplay. Indeed, Joshua Redman notes that Ceiba is one of the best modern mainstream instrumental jazz records I’ve heard in years: gorgeous writing; flawless yet fearless playing; impeccably crafted from beginning to end.
As an improviser, Simon has that holy trinity: melody, feel and flow. And what a sound. It’s difficult to add more. Ceiba is available in DL and LP formats – again from 
It’s thanks to promoter Rob Adams up in Scotland for this one – a brand new live recording from Cuban multi-instrumentalist and Grammy-nominated Omar Sosa. The new album has the frankly awful title We Are Not the Headliner, but get past that and you’ll have a great tiem with this music… The new record features Sosa’s new ensemble Quarteto Americanos – reeds player Sheldon Brown, drummer Josh Jones and bass player Ernesto Mazar Kindelán. The 11 tracks feature tunes the band has presented on tour over the past few years plus several new pieces, There’s special guest contributions from Natascha Atlas (vocals), Guillermo Gómez-Peña (spoken word), Reggie Stephens (spoken word), Tito Leliebre (percussion), and Camilo Landau and Kai Lyons (tres). For more Omar Sosa you could start with his excellent Mulatos album (2004) or that album’s rather good set of remixes – including 
Our final tune is from the outer edges of jazz – but it is excellent. With dub wizard Adrian Sherwood at the controls this set of remixes from the Nightmares on Wax album In a Space Outta Sound is predictably inspired. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of In A Space Outta Sound, George Evelyn (aka Nightmares on Wax) handed over the tapes to Sherwood who went on a heady version excursion with eight tracks from the original record, in the spirit of the reggae and sound system roots that informed the original album. You Bliss [not My Bliss as Neil referred to it in the show] is a reworking of the original 
This is another timeles classic. A Cosmic Jazz favourite that has also appeared on the show before. The tune Watarase by Japanese pianist Fumio Itabashi, who appeared in London for the first time at the 2025 London Jazz Festival, has appeared in many versions. including a remix by Joe Clausell. There are eight different versions on the double CD from which this track is taken. This take, though, is our favourite. It is described as a Symphonic Poem and is recorded with Fumio Itabashi on piano accompanied by the Kanagawa Philharmonic Orchestra featuring vocalist Yuki Kaneko. The song is a variation on a traditional Japanese folk melody and is named after the Watarase river in Japan’s Kanto region and showcases Itabashi’s Don Pullen-influenced style. Itabashi wheels away on the piano with such improvised fervour that you have little idea of what will come next. Meanwhile the orchestra is mighty and Yuki Kaneko is something else. Her voice soars into the stratosphere as the tune builds and builds to a full-blown, monumental conclusion with swirling piano, a full orchestra and the inspired vocals of Kaneko on top of it all. This was a live performance and we can only breathlessly imagine what it would have been like to witness such an event. We cannot recommend this CD take on versions of Watarase highly enough – you can still find it 
Amazingly there follows a tune of exactly equal length to the Garbarek/Stenson – 20 minutes 24 seconds – from Pharaoh Sanders, with both tunes selected by Neil. It comes from the 1977 album Pharaoh. Like all of the records on this show it is unique in its soundscape, its vibe, its emotions and in the way it delves deep into soulful spirituality; it is rightly regarded as a masterpiece. The circumstances behind the production of the record were somewhat bizarre. The musicians on the record included guitarist Tisiji Munoz who went on to become a spiritual guru, organist Clifton ‘Jiggs’ Chase who went on to work for Sugar Hill Records where he co-wrote and produced The Message and Pharoah’s then wife Bedria Sanders playing the harmonium. She was a classically-trained pianist and had never played the harmonium before. This album was re-released in a 2CD/3LP set in 2023 with additional live performances on David Byre’s Luaka Bop label. There’s a version of Love Will Find a Way (which was recut as the title to Sanders’ 1978 Arista debut), The almost ambient textures in Harvest Time emerge from Munoz’s Santana-style chordal vamp to invite bass, harmonium, and sax in. There are no drums. Following the saxophonist’s blue modal solo, the tune travels across drones, transcendent guitar, and bass breaks, and near-instinctual interplay between the rhythm instruments. Listen to Harvest Time to find yourself entranced, spiritually enhanced and culturally enriched – it really is quite something.
Derek began the show with his copy of the rare 7in single of Are You Glad To Be In America? from guitarist James Blood Ulmer. In 1972, Ornette Coleman took Ulmer under his wing and taught him the principles of harmolodics – Coleman’s system that treats harmony, rhythm, and melody equally and which defined the output of his Prime Time band. The sound is defined by twin drummers G Calvin Weston and the incomparable Ronald Shannon Jackson, along with Amin Ali on electric bass. The result is this persistent nervous energy that still retains a funk core at the heart. The three musicians construct multiple layers around Ulmer, with his guitar tone a mash-up of jazz, rock, funk, and surf elements. Add into the mix Ulmer’s attempt at singing and this sounds like a disastrous combination. And yet – the result is an impassioned plea that sounds as powerful now as in late 1971 when the single was issued on the UK Rough Trade label. Ulmer died last month leaving behind a legacy of dozens of recordings, the best of which include Are You Glad To Be In America? (1972), Freelancing (1981), Odyssey (1984) and Memphis Blood: The Sun Sessions (2001). He also appeared on one of Neil’s all-time favourite records Arthur Blythe’s Lenox Avenue Breakdown from 1980 (check 
Tenor saxophonist and jazz giant Sonny Rollins was born on 03 September 1930 and died on 25 May 2026. His long career brought him two Grammys and numerous compositions that have become jazz standards, including Oleo, Airegin and Doxy. Rollins’ significance can be judged by the fact that until his death he was the only surviving musician in perhaps the most famous jazz photo of all, Art Kane’s A Great Day in Harlem (1958). Before leading his own group Rollins played with many leading jazz musicians, including Bud Powell, Miles Davis and John Coltrane. In 1956 he began recording under his own name, with Saxophone Colossus appearing two years later in 1956 – resulting in a new nickname of ‘the saxophone colossus’. Rollins’ quartet here is Max Roach on drums, Doug Watkins on bass and long-time partner Tommy Flanagan on piano. The opening track St. Thomas is an obvious one to select, although not typical of the album as a whole. It’s catchy, it swings, and Rollins’ full-on, mighty tenor gives it a real feel-good factor. With a family heritage in the Virgin Islands, Rollins plays tribute to the sounds of Caribbean calypso and it’s this that makes the tune so distinctive. Max Roach and Rollins are a perfect combination here – Roach’s precise, measured lines give Rollins opportunity to develop that celebrated rhythmic flexibility into those continuously evolving solos evident on subsequent recordings with the drummer. The partnership was to continue through until another five star record – 1958’s Freedom Suite. Check out the extended title track 
The South African pianist and composer Abdullah Ibrahim (born Dollar Brand) died last month at the age of and he’s most definitely a musician we want to remember and celebrate on Cosmic Jazz. This track, released in 1976 on the album Voice of Africa, but played here from a vinyl re-release of 1988 from the UK-based Kaz Records, is a tune of great warmth, soul and emotional intensity. It has the spirit of South Africa but in its uplifting, joyous tone has a universal message for all of us. Little Boy drives along at a measured pace but one that makes it impossible not to sway the body and reach down to the heart and soul. The musicians include Kippie Moeketsi on alto sax – one of the legends of South African music and described as the father of contemporary Black music in the country – along with Basil Coetzee and Duku Makasion on tenors. Sipho Gumede on bass and Gilbert Matthews on drums make up this powerful sextet. Perhaps the most celebrated tune on this album is the anthemic Mannenberg, a composition Ibrahim was to play until the very end of his life. Listen to Ibrahim talking about this iconic tune and then performing it live 
Ibrahim was born and raised in Cape Town and began piano study at the age of seven, going on perform over eight decades and dozens of recordings. He founded the Jazz Epistles in 1961 (with aforementioned Kippie Moeketsi) and celebrated trumpeter Hugh Masekela who – like Abdullah Ibrahim – was to feature on the international stage. Apartheid in South Africa forced Ibrahim to leave the country for Switzerland in 1962 and it was here that he was heard by the touring Duke Ellington who set up a recording session for him. In 1965 Ibrahim moved to New York and played the Newport Jazz Festival that year. He was to settle in New York but continued to visit South Africa where in 1974 he recorded the tune Mannenberg that was to become an anthem for the anti-apartheid movement. Ibrahim was to perform across the world, playing and recording with many musicians, giving his final live performance in Cape Town just three months before his death. African Marketplace was the first Ibrahim record Neil bought (on release in 1980) and features eight folkloric anthems that celebrate growing up in South Africa. The 12-piece group includes Americans Carlos Ward on alto, Craig Harris on trombone and Cecil McBee on bass. The Wedding is simply a beautiful hymn (with a truly gorgeous alto solo from Carlos Ward) and really the highlight of this second Ibrahim classic recording – it’s a moving, spiritual work of art.
Colin Steele is a trumpeter from Scotland who we have enjoyed and played on Cosmic Jazz. He has a new album released via the Scottish label 
Quiet Fire is the new album from British producer, keyboard player and Edition Records founder Dave Stapleton – a beat-based jazz record shaped by loop-focused production and centred on Fender Rhodes, bass and drums, It’s Stapleton’s first album under his own name in over 13 years, and reflects a move towards more beat-led writing. Stapleton is featured on Prophet and Moog, with sampled fragments and background voices broadening the sound. There’s guest performances from Nils Petter Molvær on trumpet (who has his own new album out on Edition Records), Olga Amelchenko on saxophone and Stuart McCallum on guitar, alongside the core trio of Jon Goode on bass and Elliot Bennett on drums. Our regular listeners/readers may recognise the album’s title – but this is not the 
We’ve featured music from this Edition Records album on a previous show but it’s well work revisiting. Vital Spark emerged last year and is a collection of Kenny Wheeler’s final compositions that deploy an unusual combo of jazz ensemble and choir. Norma Winstone is on vocals, Dave Holland on bass, Nikki Iles on piano, James Maddren on drums, Mark Lockheart on tenor and soprano saxes and John Paricelli on guitar. Throughout, Wheeler’s settings of poems by Stevie Smith, Lewis Carroll, and William Blake are inspired and –as the PR for this release acknowledges – the result is unmistakably Kenny Wheeler: lyrical but unsentimental, harmonically rich yet spacious and the project comes across as a personal, shared act of remembering and reinterpreting, shaped by decades of friendship, collaboration, and quiet reverence for one of the most singular voices in modern music. Highly recommended.
We had to start with Trane – recorded live in November 1961 and released as part of the album Impressions which emerged two years later. Here Coltrane is joined by his classic quartet members McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums, along with Reggie Workman on bass and Eric Dolphy, who plays a magnificent extended bass clarinet solo. The Impressions album is something of a patchwork but for the full-on experience go to the Complete Village Vanguard box set on Impulse! Records which features two more versions of India. Many years later, McCoy Tyner was interviewed for the New York Times about these seminal recordings and said: We always were experimenting with something, expanding perimeters, looking for new horizons… That was the nature of the band, but when we played the Vanguard, it was an especially fresh period in the band’s history. We had been spurred on by meeting Ravi Shankar, and we were planning to do an album with him that never happened. But the whole band was really on fire, and it had reached one of those plateaus.
This gorgeous Sam Rivers tune has become something of a jazz standard but this version comes from tenor player Joe Henderson. In his later years, Henderson recorded two excellent albums for Blue Note with both being reissued recently in Tone Poet vinyl versions. Made available as a 2CD set in 1987, Henderson is here backed only by the peerless Ron Carter on bass and Al Foster on drums in a setting that pays homage to one of his stylistic sources, Sonny Rollins. The fourteen tunes he selected range from well-known standards to Henderson originals, along with compositions by Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, and Horace Silver. Like all of the records featured in this show, this should be part of every jazz lovers collection – indeed, the Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings suggested it as part of their Core Collection. Who are we to disagree?
One of the most famous Village Vanguard recordings has to be this one from pianist Bill Evans. There are actually two single records from Evans’ engagement at the club in 1961 (with the second to be issued being Waltz for Debby), but – as with Coltrane – the complete set on vinyl or CD is the one to go for. This is again available on vinyl or CD in sumptuous box sets – with the CD set being something of a bargain at under £30 (UK). The trio (with Scott LaFaro on bass and Paul Motian on drums) played five sets – two in the afternoon and three in the evening – with each one comprising four or five numbers and lasting about half an hour. In a nod to our celebration of the Miles Davis centenary, we’ve chosen his composition Solar. This was the last performance by the trio with bassist LaFaro, who was killed in a car accident just eleven days after the recording, a tragedy that hit Evans deeply. LaFaro is credited with transforming the role of the bass in jazz being not only a virtuosic player, but also someone who broke through the traditional walking bassline approach to create a countermelodic style that was to influence subsequent generations of players. Along with the sensitive playing of Motian, this trio is deservedly one of the most celebrated in all of jazz. Ignore at your peril!
One of Neil’s favourite alto sax players, Art Pepper’s later years were characterised by an amazing run of live recordings, including two sets at the Village Vanguard in 1977. The second of these was issued as a series of four separate records on the Contemporary label – with three titled according to the night on which they were recorded. Along with Pepper on alto (and on a great version of Ellington’s Caravan – on tenor) is George Cables on piano with George Mraz on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. Neil is lucky enough to have original versions of three of the four and all are worth searching out. The quartet are on fine form and any of these records are worth looking out for. There is a 9CD set of Pepper’s complete 1977 residency available as The Complete Village Vanguard Sessions, but – inevitably – at a price. Check the alternatives 
Pub quiz trivia question – what was the first live jazz set at the Village Vanguard to be recorded? Yes, it’s this one – Sonny Rollins’ debut at the club, recorded in 1957. Another Core Collection recording in the Penguin Guide, this is also available as a 3LP set in the Blue Note Tone Poet reissues but is more cheaply picked up in the excellent Blue Note 2CD set from 1987. This restored the tracks to their chronological order and so this second take on the tune comes from the evening set with Wilbur Ware on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. Not surprisingly, it’s another Penguin Guide Core Collection record with jazz critic and Village Voice journalist Robert Christgau opining that Rollins is charged with venturing far out from these tunes without severing the harmonic moorings normally secured by a piano. He does it again and again–but not without a certain cost in ebullience, texture, and fullness of breath. Impressive always, fun in passing, his improvisations are what avant-garde jazz is for.
Another piano trio record, this one is a this set of standards by Cole Porter, Thelonious Monk, Henry Mancini and, here, John Coltrane’s Countdown. Pianist Mehldau was just short of 27 when he recorded his first Village Vanguard set with his regular trio of bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy in 1997. Despite accusations of pretentiousness and self-indulgence, Mehldau is a jazz artist who draws directly on his classical training. Like Bill Evans, he struggled with heroin addiction but has consistently released imaginative records in many different formats – the traditional piano trio, solo piano, a classical song cycle with Renée Fleming, film soundtracks and more. All of the trio recordings are worth exploring with the Third volume – which features interpretations of songs by Rogers and Hart, Radiohead and Nick Drake’s beautiful 
It’s not only ‘straight’ jazz artists who have recorded at the Vanguard: next up is pianist Chucho Valdés bringing a Latin sensibility to the show with his enhanced trio featuring additional percussion from Roberto Vizcaino Guillot and vocalist (and Chucho’s sister) Mayra Caridad Valdés. There’s a great take on 
Follow the Red Line is the third live album from saxophonist Chris Potter. It was recorded in February 2007 and released later that year on the Sunnyside label. On this record – that genuinely blurs the lines between, jazz, rock, funk and more – Potter is alongside guitarist Adam Rogers, keyboardist Craig Taborn and drummer Nate Smith. All pieces bar one are over ten minutes long, giving Potter, Rogers and Taborn opportunities to really stretch out. Follow the Red Line may be nowhere near more traditional Village Vanguard residences but it is well worth investigating. Potter now records on the UK Edition Records label and his 2026 release Alive With Ghosts Today will be reviewed in future CJ shows.
We’re staying with Edition Records for this late 2024 live release from saxophonist Ben Wendell and his group – Gerald Clayton on piano, Linda May Han Oh on bass and Obed Calvaire on drums. In some ways this is the most obviously ‘jazz’ record of Wendel’s varied career so far. He’s recorded with Tigran Hamasyan, Bill Frisell, Eric Harland and Terrace Martin among others, and he’s also noted as a record producer in a career stretching across an eclectic range of musical styles. We featured his 2026 release BaRcoDe in a February 2026 show and we’ll undoubtedly bring you more of this Canadian-American new jazz artist in future shows.
And so we end as we began, with John Coltrane recorded at the Village Vanguard in May 1966 and featuring his quintet, with Coltrane on tenor and soprano saxophones, bass clarinet, and flute, Pharoah Sanders on tenor saxophone and flute, Alice Coltrane on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Rashied Ali on drums with an uncredited Emanuel Rahim on percussion. There are only two tunes – an extended version of Naima and an even longer take on My Favorite Things with Garrison playing a bass solo credited as Introduction to My Favorite Things. Biographer Eric Nisenson noted that Coltrane was obviously making a statement about how far he had come since both his first Vanguard album and his first recording of these two pieces. By recording such familiar tunes, he hoped perhaps to give those having difficulty with his new music some sort of familiar territory from which he could jump off to new, unexplored terrain. Maybe true, but this album is a world away from Coltrane’s 1961 debut at the venue. Perhaps the most astounding feature of this 15 minute take on Naima is Pharoah Sanders’ solo. Ben Ratliff in his excellent book Coltrane: The Story of a Sound (2007) notes that Sanders’s solo on this ‘Naima’ begins with abrasive huffing and scrambling, not dissimilar from a sound Archie Shepp liked to get; it works through wild passages of fast and repetitive playing, terrifically ugly challenges of squelched and shrieking sounds, and hoarse, brawny tours through sections of the melody. The performance is full of personality, full of its own sound, not at all boring. Sanders uses almost purely metamusical logic—intuitive gestures of the emotions, of the nerves—to make the seven-minute solo cohere. This music is undoubtedly extreme but Coltrane’s striving to find new methods of expression in his music is always worth exploring – perhaps even more so sixty years later.
Our praises begin with Clifford Jordan’s wonderful self-titled tribute to John Coltrane from his superb Glass Bead Games double album – one of Neil’s undoubted favourites from the Strata East label. Writing for 
Terry Callier possessed a rich baritone that he deploys to great effect here on this vocal tribute to one of his heroes. It comes from his third and final album for the Cadet label and is full of richly-detailed arrangements as well as thoughtful political and social messages. Can’t Catch the Trane is one of the highlights of this impressive 1973 set along with a sensitive reading of Duke Ellington’s Satin Doll and the epic album closer Alley-Wind Song. I Just Can’t Help Myself has been reissued on vinyl and the demo versions of Can’t Catch the Trane and other titles are available on the excellent 2005 budget compilation Life Lessons: The Best of Terry Callier. It’s alto saxophonist Don Myrick (who featured in the Phenix Horns for Earth, Wind & Fire) on this perfect demo version. For those unfamilar with Callier’s work, a great place to start is with his excellent 1998 comeback album Timepeace, issued on Gilles Peterson’s Talkin’ Loud label. You can track down a copy 
No apologies for more music from Brian Jackson’s new album Now More Thank Ever, which has just appeared on BBE Records following the ‘teaser’ releases of some tracks in EP format. This time, our obvious choice is the inspiring Lady Day & John Coltrane, one of Gil Scott Heron’s most famous compositions. Most of this new release is another tribute – this time to the memory of Brian Jackson’s former musical partner who together gave us many memorable albums including Winter in America (1974) and It’s Your World and From South Africa to South Carolina (both 1975). Gil was the brother I never had and I was the brother he never had, said Jackson in a 2022 Guardian newspaper interview. We had so much in common: both only children who were raised by our mothers and estranged from our fathers. Our mothers pushed us to succeed academically and we both enrolled at Lincoln [University] because 
And now we come to the master – the icon whose centenary will be celebrated on 23 September this year. Here at CJ we’re getting in early, featuring several programmes that will include tributes to this giant of jazz. We begin with one of Coltrane’s later recordings, drawn largely from tapes discovered in 1994 by Alice Coltrane who plays piano throughout and who titled eight of the tracks featured. The album features Rashied Ali on drums and Jimmy Garrison on bass. Garrison had actually left Coltrane’s group in 1966 but he came back for these recordings the following year. Stellar Regions is actually an early version of Venus which appears on the duo album Interstellar Space with with Ali on drums and Coltrane on tenor sax recorded just a week after these tunes. D avid Wild’s album liner notes are worth quoting in some detail: These recordings all have a similar aura. Among Coltrane’s final phrases, they are almost the last notes to be captured on tape, performances thus haunted by our foreknowledge that what will follow them is silence. More importantly and perhaps even more compelling, they represent a suggestion of the evolution his music would have taken had his life not been cut so short, a tantalizing glimpse of an unrealized future… these eight compositions, a day’s work from mid-February of 1967, stand alone as fully formed masterworks, explorations of the “late Coltrane” idiom. That makes clear the driving force that was pushing Coltrane forwards – for just a few months later in July 1967 he would be dead from liver cancer.
We started 2026 with a track from Ruby Rushton’s latest album – their fifth. This UK band is led by sax and flute player Edward Cawthorne – aka Tenderlonius – with Nick Walters on trumpet and flugelhorn, Aidan Shepherd on piano, Fender Rhodes and synths and Tim Carnegie on drums, with all band members making percussion contributions. All Ruby Rushton records are released on their own 22a independent record label. Oli Reeves in his notes to the vinyl album release states that This is a band still evolving. Trademark catchy riffs and heavy grooves are still there but are now heightened by a level of maturity and a sense of belonging that hadn’t been encountered previously. And this is why Ruby Rushton deserves more recognition amidst the ongoing surge of new British jazz artists. If you don’t know their music, check out 
And so we turn to another British saxophonist, Camilla George. She studied at London’s Trinity College of Music, where Jean Toussaint was a tutor and then she played with Courtney Pine’s Tomorrow’s Warriors big band. George plays alto sax and identifies Kenny Garrett as an important influence, which explains the addition of his tune Ms Baja featuring effective scatting from Zara Macfarlane. Her debut album Isang appeared in 2017 and was much praised at the time with critic John Fordham noting the saxophonist’s nimbleness, light sound and bursts of raw emotion recalling the 50s cool school as well as the Coltrane quartet. High praise indeed. Other than Ms Baja, the compositions on Isang are all her own and the band includes one of our favourite keyboard players on the UK scene – the always impressive Sarah Tandy. Second album The People Could Fly appeared in 2018 and was followed in 2022 by the even more diverse Ibio-Ibio in 2022 which included Daniel Casimir on bass, Shirley Tetteh on guitar, Winston Clifford on drums plus Senegalese kora player Kadialy Kouyate, acclaimed US drummer Daru Jones and Birmingham’s finest MC Lady Sanity.
We first featured Joel Ross on Cosmic Jazz at the height of the Covid pandemic in 2020 following the release of KingMaker, his first album on Blue Note, and we caught up with him earlier this year exploring his gospel-influenced 2026 release simply titled Gospel Music. Before this was the excellent album nublues and we return to this outing with the title track. There are covers of Thelonious Monk’s Evidence and Coltrane’s Equinox and Central Park West, sitting alongside seven original pieces. The title track is an absolute showcase for Ross’s talent – something that Neil can verify, having seen him in 2023 performing in an all-star group with drummer Makaya McCraven alongside guitarist Matt Gold, electric bassist Junius Paul and trumpeter Marquis Hill.
At the beginning of the year, we profiled vocalist Ledisi and her tribute album For Dinah. Best known as an R&B singer, Ledisi is an excellent jazz vocalist too. In an Echoes magazine interview in 2025, Ledisi identified Dinah Washington as an under-appreciated artist, drawing attention to her influence on Aretha Franklin and Quincy Jones, noting too that There are only five people on my wall at home: my mom, my great aunt, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone and Dinah. This Dinah Washington original may have the same title as ‘The Tennessee Plowboy’ Johnny Arnold’s country number from 1950 but is a much more spirited number – and Ledisi does indeed do it justice. She’s supported on this track by Christian McBride on bass, McClenty Hunter on drums and Michael King on piano. Highly recommended.
Derek was lucky enough, some time ago as a student, to attend a college that had a jazz club. How many colleges/universities would have such an institution these days? Seeing live jazz there was what turned Derek from a jazz sceptic into a jazz enthusiast. He remembers seeing the Don Rendell/Ian Carr Quintet with Michael Garrick, Dave Green, Trevor Tomkin and went out to buy the record Change Is. Mike Westbrook also played and equally generated much enthusiasm for jazz. Derek is the proud owner of some Mike Westbrook records on vinyl, including the 1970 release Love Songs from which the opening tune of this show is taken. It is now classified as a rare record and will not come cheap if you wish to purchase on vinyl – Neil has tracked 
This Mike Westbrook track has appeared before on Cosmic Jazz and again there are no apologies for the repeat. It has been described as his outstanding achievement and that comment was made in a request for 
This piece was originally commissioned by Swedish Radio with a requirement for saxophonist John Surman to be part of the band. The title refers to the room at Leeds Polytechnic where Mike’s wife Kate Westbrook was an art lecturer and where much of the music was written. The music was first performed live in Sweden but was not released on record at the time, although in 2020 it was remastered from the original tapes and issued as Love & Understanding by 
The music of Mike Westbrook has many varied changes of mood, style tempo and rhythm and this is illustrated by the final two tunes from the Marching Songs album. The album was commissioned for the 1968 Camden Festival, released on record in 1969 and re-released by 
These five opening tunes have been selected to remember and celebrate the music of Mike Westbrook (21 March 1936 to 11 April 2026), who was writing and performing until shortly before his death. Only recently on 10 April Cosmic Jazz featured a tune from the release, for the first time, of the Mike Westbrook Orchestra The Cortege Live At The BBC 1980 on 
The Shieling Companion Pieces is the new EP from acclaimed Scottish pianist and composer Fergus McCreadie, It’s not released until July but you can check out Ford The River here on Cosmic Jazz. Recorded on North Uist in a remote cottage in the Outer Hebrides, with the trio gathered in one room around an upright piano, these pieces extend the atmosphere and shared concentration of the original album release. With David Bowden (bass) and Stephen Henderson (drums), McCreadie builds on a sound forged through years of collective trust and sustained touring, blending Scottish folk spirit with modern jazz language. We’ve championed McCreadie’s music from the beginning and he is now one of British jazz’s leading voices, recognised for performances that carry directness and emotional weight – as Neil knows from seeing him in performance most recently in 2024.
Time to feature again another contemporary talent from the Edition Records, pianist Sultan Stevenson and his trio – Jacob Gryn on bass and Joel Walters on drums – with guests Soweto Kinch on tenor sax and Josh Short on trumpet/flugelhorn. As a teenager Stevenson developed his craft at the Julian Joseph Jazz Academy and Tomorrow’s Warriors, subsequently graduating from The Guildhall School of Music in 2023. He is the winner of The UK Parliamentary Jazz Award for Best Newcomer 2023 and was nominated for a Jazz FM Breakthrough Act of the Year in 2025. In April 2026 Sultan joined the 2026-2028 cohort of the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist scheme, marking a turn in Stevenson’s career that is certain to lead to some very special projects. Watch out for future developments.
This show has followed the tunes remembering Mike Westbrook by featuring selections from three contemporary British pianists/keyboard players to show that the tradition of innovation and achievement set by Westbrook and others such as Michael Garrick continues in Britain today. The story of Sarah Tandy – a BBC selected Young Classical Pianist who turned jazz musician while studying Literature at Cambridge University – is an interesting one. To see her live is something else as she maintains a cool presence while her fingers zoom effortlessly up and down the keyboards. The title of her 2019 album Infection In The Sentence is a reference to a work by Sandra Gilbert and Susdan Gubar who argue that patriarchal language and literature infect women writers with anxiety. It is a great album, much played and loved by Cosmic Jazz and the tune Timelord is a fine funky, driving example with great bass lines. Tandy has not released anything since but there is much to look forward to. In her Sarah Tandy Piano 24 February 2026 Instagram post she admits to having been busy slaying MANY mighty dragons … but I am back from my adventures in the wilderness with a hard drive full of music. She asks us to stay tuned. She has a band together again who performed at the Brick Lane Jazz Festival on 21 April and on on 2 June 2026 is at Ronnie’s where she notes that she will have the whole rabble with me – Binker Golding on sax, Poppy Daniels on trumpet, Jihad Darwish on bass and Jamie Murray on drums. We hope to bring some new Sarah Tandy music to Cosmic Jazz in 2026.
The full length track on 1970’s Bitches Brew is over 20 minutes long and – uniquely for a jazz tune at the time – features over a dozen studio edits and loops from producer Teo Macero. Jazzwise noted that Miles would Never again would he turn himself, and the music of his time, inside out acknowledging Bitches Brew as the last epoch-making album to appear in jazz. Now whilst Cosmic Jazz might question this unequivocal statement, the influence of this double album on the world of jazz cannot be overestimated. I’ve written about Bitches Brew many times on this platform and elsewhere (see our first Miles @ 100 show) and so had to feature the album once more, choosing the second single edit from the 
Get Up With It is a rather misunderstood album in the Miles Davis canon. It emerged in 1974 and is the second of two sort-of compilations that emerged that year, the first being Big Fun. Both feature music from the 1970-74 period when Miles was wilfully bending genres – and Big Fun contains one of Neil’s favourite out-takes, the improbably funky 
An odd pairing? Not really: in 1982 Brian Eno travelled to Ghana where he spent time recording ambient sounds on a portable cassette recorder and then listening to the results on his headphones. In his liner notes to Ambient 4: On Land released later that year Eno noted that The effect of this simple technological system was to cluster all the disparate sounds into one aural frame: they became music. In the revised reissue notes he added that after returning from Ghana, Eno noted that the guitarist Robert Quine had given him a copy of Miles Davis’ He Loved Him Madly and that Teo Macero’s revolutionary production on that piece seemed to me to have the ‘spacious’ quality I was after and … it became a touchstone to which I returned frequently. 
Live at the Fillmore East is notable in that it records the final concert with saxophonist Wayne Shorter in Miles’ band. A few months after, he would join Joe Zawinul to create Weather Report – striking out in another direction completely. If Weather Report is new to you then compare what they do with Zawinul’s tune 
It’s About That Time originally appeared on A Silent Way (1969) forming the core of the side-long experiment that was bookended by the title track. This remix from a 2007 tribute-cum-reinterpretation of some classic Miles tunes features rapper Nas on vocals and his father Olu Dara on trumpet, Carlos Santana on guitar and Miles’ nephew Vince Wilburn, Jr. on drums and programming, with co-production by drummer Lenny White. The centrepiece of this unusual EP is the updating of It’s About That Time but there’s a 
Miles had returned to the studio in 1980, after a long hiatus during which he left the trumpet alone and focused on women and cocaine – according to his autobiography. He was certainly not in good health at this time but he recorded the patchy The Man With the Horn (1981) and then formed a live band with Mike Stern on guitar, Al Foster on drums, Bill Evans on soprano sax, Mino Cinelu on percussion and Marcus Miller on bass. It had been six years since Miles had played live and audiences were nervous about the outcome. They needn’t have worried. Miles subsequently won a Grammy for best jazz instrumental performance by a soloist but, characteristically, said that he didn’t know why… Neil saw this group in April 1982 when Miles performed three nights at the Hammersmith Odeon, London and where Back Seat Betty – a highlight of We Want Miles – was a standout. Writer George Cole in his excellent blog The Last Miles has written persuasively about this show – find out more 
Perhaps the most conventional of Neil’s choices for this second Miles special but, nonetheless, this final set of performances by Miles with John Coltrane is a must have. So What comes from a performance at the Tivolis Koncertsal in Copenhagen. It’s the same group that recorded the previous year (in 1959) the iconic Kind of Blue album with Wynton Kelly replacing Bill Evans on piano. These are intense performances with Kelly being an admirable foil for Miles’ modal constructions and Coltrane’s increasingly muscular solos. This anthology was released as part of the ongoing Bootleg series in 2018 and is available as a 4CD with a single vinyl edition of the complete Copenhagen concert also in the racks.
Betsu no Jikan is the culmination of a two-year exploration by guitarist Takuru Okada, improvising with