On Saturday, September 26, Rick Mitchell will be presenting three hours of John Coltrane’s music – both classic recordings and historical rarities – in honor of what would have been his 94th birthday this week. Although his recording career lasted only 15 years, he never stopped growing creatively during that time, and he developed the tenor and soprano saxophone chops to play anything he could think of. But Coltrane’s inspiration is not just musical. Born into the Jim Crow South, he overcame oppression far beyond anything most of us living today have ever known to become a beacon of light for those in search of liberation – personal, political, cultural and spiritual. As Wayne Shorter put it, Coltrane’s later music imagined not only a new way of playing, it imagined a new way of living.
The program is The Motif, where we imagine a new sensibility in jazz every Saturday from 2 to 5 p.m. It can also be streamed on the station’s website, www.kboo.fm, where the audio will be archived with a play list for anyone who wants to go back to it. We would like to remind listeners that it is KBOO’s Fall Pledge Drive, and since the station is closed to volunteers and there is no way to staff a phone bank, we are relying on listeners to make their pledges online. So if you like what you hear, please consider becoming a member or renewing your membership at this time.
- KBOO