John Coltrane - Meditations (Verve Vault Series)

Meditations is John Coltrane at his most searching and spiritually intense, reissued as part of the Verve Vault Series in the year that marks a century since his birth.

Recorded at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs in 1965 and released on Impulse! in 1966, the album is often heard as the spiritual successor to A Love Supreme. It is also a turning point in his story. This was the last Coltrane recording with his classic quartet of McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones, expanded here with Pharoah Sanders on a second tenor saxophone and Rashied Ali as a second drummer. Within months, Tyner and Jones had moved on and a freer direction had taken hold.

The music unfolds as a continuous suite, and the track titles trace a spiritual arc. It begins with the explosive The Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, where two tenors cry out over a churning, double-drum storm, then moves through Compassion and Love toward the closing Serenity, with long stretches of collective improvisation along the way.

This is challenging, ecstatic music that rewards the kind of focused listening a record invites. For anyone who has worn out A Love Supreme and wants to hear where Coltrane went next, it is the natural next step.