Coltrane Revisited: Blue Train at Birdland

Pianist Steve Kuhn first made his mark during a brief stint with John Coltrane's quartet. He recently released a critically acclaimed ECM recording exploring Coltrane's repertoire. At Birdland, Kuhn leads an annual all-star gathering in celebration of the legendary saxophonist and jazz innovator's birthday. Born in North Carolina in 1926, John Coltrane emerged on the jazz scene in the 1950s, playing tenor and soprano sax with Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. A pioneer of “hard bop” in the 1960s, he led his own groups and reinvented jazz with experimentation and improvisation, his later recordings reflecting his belief that music was a form of spiritual expression. The all-star quintet, which this year explores some of Coltrane's late 1950's hard-bop repertoire recorded for the Blue Note and Atlantic labels, includes trumpeter Tom Harrell, saxophonist Eric Alexander, drummer Andrew Cyrille and bassist Lonnie Plaxico....

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Pianist Steve Kuhn first made his mark during a brief stint with John Coltrane's quartet. He recently released a critically acclaimed ECM recording exploring Coltrane's repertoire. At Birdland, Kuhn leads an annual all-star gathering in celebration of the legendary saxophonist and jazz innovator's birthday. Born in North Carolina in 1926, John Coltrane emerged on the jazz scene in the 1950s, playing tenor and soprano sax with Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. A pioneer of “hard bop” in the 1960s, he led his own groups and reinvented jazz with experimentation and improvisation, his later recordings reflecting his belief that music was a form of spiritual expression. The all-star quintet, which this year explores some of Coltrane's late 1950's hard-bop repertoire recorded for the Blue Note and Atlantic labels, includes trumpeter Tom Harrell, saxophonist Eric Alexander, drummer Andrew Cyrille and bassist Lonnie Plaxico.

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