JOHN COLTRANE — Africa / Brass (review)

JOHN COLTRANE — Africa / Brass album cover Album · 1961 · Post Bop Buy this album from MMA partners
5/5 ·
Mssr_Renard
Much has been written about this album.

An album that can easily be defined as a masterpiece. Coltrane has made different masterpieces, each different from the other.

This album is not a quartet album, but it features a 'big band', there are 21 musicians featured on this album, but not all at once. The core 'band' is Coltrane/Tyner/Workman/Jones, with Dolphy doing the arrangments.

Somewhere I read the whole album is in the key of 'E', making this an even more brilliant album, because it is worlds apart from anything Bop stands for.

This is an album wich so much happening that any time you play it, you discover something new. I think it is more a modern classical album than a straight jazz album.

I don't know if this album propelled Impulse! or later albums by Coltrane. I think that Nelson's Blues and the Abstract Truth was more succesfull, though, but I really don't know these things.

Back to Africa/Brass, a wonderful album with a lot of brass (horns), wonderful musicians, and everyone is really enjoying themselves and giving their best. You can really tell.
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