My Favorite Things as a hybrid stereo SACD: for the Atlantic 75 Series, Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound mastered the album directly from the original master tape to DSD. All four performances play straight through as one sequence – including Coltrane’s soprano saxophone in the Cole Porter ballad “Everytime We Say Goodbye”.
Popular songs as a point of departure
With My Favorite Things, released in 1961, John Coltrane’s music takes a decisive step outward. It was his first album built around the quartet with McCoy Tyner, Steve Davis and Elvin Jones, and the first to put the soprano saxophone at the centre of his recorded work. Familiar songs are not comfortable material here: Coltrane treats their melodies and forms as the ground for sustained rhythmic and harmonic exploration.
A modal circle around a show tune
In the title piece, the Rodgers and Hammerstein song becomes a circling modal framework. McCoy Tyner’s repeated chords open up a wide harmonic field, Elvin Jones sets rolling waves of pulse in motion, and Coltrane’s soprano leaves the familiar theme for ever more concentrated patterns. The music can stay in one area for long stretches without losing its direction, because phrasing and rhythmic pressure never stop shifting.
“Everytime We Say Goodbye” shows the soprano in a Cole Porter ballad. “Summertime” gives another well-known melody a darker, heavier outline on tenor saxophone, and “But Not for Me” closes the album with the quartet taking on a more conventional song form at an urgent tempo. Together the four pieces catch Coltrane at the moment when a popular melody, a new instrumental voice and a developing quartet language opened up a whole field of possibilities.
The Atlantic 75 hybrid stereo SACD
CAPA 011 SA is a hybrid stereo SACD from the Analogue Productions Atlantic 75 Series. According to the publisher, Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound mastered it directly from the original master tape to DSD. The SACD layer plays on SACD-capable players, the CD layer on any conventional CD player. The disc contains the four pieces of the original album.
You order from Michael 45 in Germany. We arrange the US import and ship from Hilden.
More from the series: Atlantic 75 Series
Also in another edition: My Favorite Things
More SACDs by John Coltrane: Giant Steps · Bags & Trane · Soultrane
Artist page: All titles by John Coltrane
Customer question: Buying Analogue Productions records in Europe
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