Jazz History Listening Course: John Coltrane

This free 8-week Jazz history course lands on the musical world of saxophonist John Coltrane (1926–67), launching on the eve of his birth centennial.

Above all, John Coltrane embodies the profile of the Jazz musician as a creative artist, entailing all the exploration, expressivity, and artistic freedom that that word evokes. Coltrane set the pace in the Sixties on tenor and soprano saxophones and remains a core figure for contemporary Jazz listeners. He’s shaped Jazz’s last 50 years more than any other figure.

Coltrane’s name is referenced widely, but often we spend the time to listen only to major landmarks like "Giant Steps," "A Love Supreme," "My Favorite Things." In class we’ll play from these pivotal examples of the unfolding of his career, and fit them into the larger fabric of Trane’s history and the greater sphere of Jazz he inhabited. We will discuss and appreciate the finer elements of what made his music distinctive and powerful.

We’ll explore the path that Coltrane took—from early R&B anonymity into the Miles Davis groups of the late 50s that made Kind of Blue and other masterpieces. We trace Coltrane's leader career from “Stardust” to "Giant Steps" to "My Favorite Things" to "A Love Supreme" and beyond.

This series flows as a lecture/discussion and listening session. As always, there’s no pre-requisite or prior history with the music, no registration necessary; no tests or papers—just great sounds and stories.

About the instructor: Jazz scholar and educator Ben Young has spent 30 years doing first-person research into the history of jazz music, as learned through direct contact with the musicians and the artifacts of their achievements. Young was heard for nearly 25 years as a radio host on WKCR-FM in New York City, where he hosted programs dealing with the gamut of Jazz and modern improvised music, and spent a decade as the station’s first Director of Broadcasting and Operations. He has produced, annotated or researched several hundred historical jazz reissues for major interests and independent labels, and has written a small number of monographs and articles documenting essential figures of the New York’s 20th Century jazz scene—including 1998’s Dixonia: A Bio-Discography of Bill Dixon. His exhaustive biography of pianist Cecil Taylor is forthcoming in 2027. Since 2009 he has been a staff lecturer in the Swing University program at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Young presently is director of the Jazz History Database, which was founded at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.