John Coltrane

How often, in a pre-meme age, was it possible to track the evolution of a language? There are many possible answers to that rhetorical, and one resides here: in a small cache of footage depicting John Coltrane at three pivotal moments in the first half of the 1960s. Coltrane — the magnificent tenor and soprano saxophonist, indefatigable bandleader-composer and insatiable creative pathfinder — compressed a lifetime’s worth of artistic development into his tragically brief career.