Shakespeare, Coltrane, Bob Marley What is the connection? What do artists do? As apprentices, they develop several aspects of their thinking at once. They develop skills to master the basics of their crafts. They improve these skills to move them forward. They analyze what they experience in the art form and then...
Neither Elvin Jones or McCoy Tyner were happy about leaving the great John Coltrane Quartet in early 1965. Or about being replaced by Alice Coltrane and Rashied Ali – but Trane saw something very clear in what he wanted from the group, from Alice and from Rashied – that oddly he wasn’t getting from Elvin...
Miles Davis and John Coltrane. both born in 1926. Very different backgrounds. Miles came from a priviledged family — father was a dentist and landowner. Coltrane came from a working class family. His dad was a tailor and had a little dry cleaning and pressing shop. His two grandfathers were Methodist ministers in North Carolina....
The JackStraw Cultural Center, under the direction of Joan Rabinowitz, asked me and colleague Joan Hsiao to teach a jazz workshop for second graders. I suggested we learn about the childhood of John Coltrane. Educator Joan Hsiao and I spent 6 class sessions with each of two second-grade classes at McGilvra Public Elementary School. We...