John Coltrane - In Europe (1965)

John Coltrane and his bands had a lot of love for the European people. In 1961, 1962 and 1963 they made long tours in several major cities from London to Sweden, It should be noted that Coltrane also was on a lengthy tour as part of Miles Davis group the very year before (his last one ever).  Paris, Denmark, West Berlin, Stockholm, Helsinki, and Milano to ame a few of the stops. Apparantly the first set of shows in England in '61 was met with downright hostiliy (similiar to Bird's first angry apperance in Paris with Miles Davis in 1960) but in most of the other countries it went down very well. 1964 was a European sabbath but what some might not know is that in 1965 they made a short tour of mainly Fance and Belgiu. For July 26 and 27 they were booked for the Salle Pleyel Festival in Paris. Most Coltrane fanatics knows that on that first evening a French pianist, promoter and fan had got a promo copy of "A Love Supreme" which was just about to be released in Europe and was able to coax Coltrane to perform the entire suite for the first ad last time in a live setting. This of course has been included on two editions of various deluxe editions of the album by now and should be well known even to somewhat casual fans. But did you know that a broadcast was made of most of the first two tracks - the only known video withh audio of this performance to exist? If you haven't seen it check out the 13 minutes excerpt known to have survived.


However the day after the group was back to their reguar set, and although it's said that the entire 60 performance was filmed no one has ever been able to find "My Favorite Things" in video (luckily the audio survive). The tracklisting is "Naima", "Ascension" (sometimes known as "Blue Valse", "My Favoirte Things", Jimmy Garrison bass introduction to "Impressions". Enjoy it in full above.
The day after they played the Salle Pleyel Festival, unfortuataly the full set was not either recorded or has never been made available and there were no video dumentation as far as we know. However they did a stunning rendition of "Afro Blue", a 22 minutes long quartet verison of "Ascension" and the always reliable "Impressions". Check it out on this Mp3 rip from the bootleg "Live in Paris" by clicking on the title in blue (you can stream it by clicking, if you want to save it right click on the link and choose Save As....
Finally they wrapped up the flash tour of Europe with an out of this world TV broadcast in Belgium, at a venue called Comblan La-Tour. 40 minutes of truly intense playing by all involedved, from one of Trane's greatest solos ever on "My Favorite Things", building up from beautiful takes of "Vigil" and "Naima". Garrison and Elvin Jones are litterally steaming and McCoy Tyner giving a lot of solo space. This was all four concert played in Europe in 1965 and we should all thank our lucky stars that some people had the foresight of recording and eve filming.

 P.S. These documents are also very imporant as they are among the very last performance of the classic Coltrane Quartet performing together, especially in such pristine quality. We also have "New Thing at Newport" (released in full as the highly recommended Impulse CD "Newport '63 / '65) recorded just before the Antibes show. Enjoy!

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