John Coltrane

John Coltrane transformed jazz through relentless spiritual and technical inquiry, moving from bebop journeyman to avant-garde prophet in barely fifteen years. Born in North Carolina in 1926, he apprenticed with Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis before forming his classic quartet in 1960. His approach to harmony, particularly the rapid chord substitutions later termed "Coltrane changes", redrew the boundaries of improvisation. A Love Supreme (1965) fused modal jazz with devotional intensity, becoming both commercial success and sacred text. Later work like Ascension (1966) pursued collective free improvisation, alienating some listeners whilst inspiring generations of experimentalists. His soprano saxophone work on My Favorite Things popularised the instrument in modern jazz. Coltrane's sound, that distinctive sheets of sound technique with its cascading arpeggios and overblown multiphonics, reflected postwar black consciousness, searching and uncompromising. He died from liver cancer in 1967, aged forty. His influence permeates not just jazz but rock, devotional music, and any art prioritising transcendence over entertainment. The search continues.