Ascension is a studio album by the jazz composer and musician John Coltrane. It was released through Impulse! Records in February 1966. It is considered a watershed in Coltrane's work, with the albums recorded before it being more conventional in structure and the albums recorded after it being looser, free jazz inspired works. In addition, it signaled Coltrane's interest in moving away from the quartet format. AllMusic called it "the single recording that placed John Coltrane firmly into the avant-garde". It was recorded at the Van Gelder Studio in June 1965.
Background At the time of the Ascension recording session, Coltrane was one of the world's most successful jazz artists in both the artistic and commercial sense. His best-selling album A Love Supreme was nominated for a Grammy Award, and was voted "album of the year" by both DownBeat and Jazz magazines. In addition, Coltrane was elected to DownBeat's Hall of Fame, putting him in the company of Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. At the same time, in the months since A Love Supreme was recorded, Coltrane's music had become increasingly turbulent, moving further in the direction of free jazz. Coltrane had befriended saxophonist Albert Ayler, and was heavily influenced by his music; meanwhile, he had also become somewhat of a father figure for a number of younger avant-garde players, some of whom would appear on Ascension. According to writer Bernard Gendron, "At the height of his career, riding on the momentum of the critical and popular triumph of A Love Supreme, Coltrane was the modern jazz star of the 1960s, with a large following of serious jazz fans and great respect from his musician peers. He was in an ideal position to bring into the orbit of the avant-garde fans and musicians who had previously hesitated, been puzzled or mildly hostile."
Additional musicians The musicians that Coltrane chose to supplement the members of the classic quartet were a mix of players ranging from established to relatively unknown, all of whom were younger than Coltrane, and many of whom had played with Coltrane in the years preceding the recording of Ascension. Trumpeter Freddie Hubbard and bassist Art Davis were well-known and well-recorded by that point, and both had recorded with Coltrane on Africa/Brass and Olé Coltrane. (Davis also appeared on The John Coltrane Quartet Plays, recorded earlier in 1965.) Saxophonist Archie Shepp recorded his first Impulse! album, Four for Trane, in 1964 after Coltrane recommended him to producer Bob Thiele, and went on to release over a dozen albums on the label. Shepp, along with Art Davis, also appeared on an alternate take of the "Acknowledgement" section of A Love Supreme, which was released more than thirty years after the appearance of the original recording.A Love Supreme Deluxe Edition. 2002; Impulse! Records 5899452, liner notes. Shortly after the recording of Ascension, Shepp appeared on New Thing at Newport, a split LP with Coltrane's quartet appearing on side one and Shepp's quartet on side two.
Shepp also introduced Coltrane to saxophonist Marion Brown, and Coltrane soon used his influence at Impulse! to help Brown secure the recording date for Three for Shepp. Saxophonist John Tchicai had previously recorded with Shepp as part of the New York Contemporary Five and on Four for Trane, and also sat in with Coltrane during one or more performances at the Half Note. Trumpeter Dewey Johnson had played with Marion Brown and repeatedly sat in with Coltrane's group before being asked to participate in the recording of Ascension. Saxophonist Pharoah Sanders had performed with Sun Ra, whose music Coltrane admired, and had also played and practiced yogic breathing exercises with Marion Brown. In 1964, Coltrane invited Sanders to sit in with his group after hearing his debut recording on the ESP label and attending a concert by Sanders's band, which featured John Hicks, Wilbur Ware, and Billy Higgins, at the Village Gate. (Ware and Higgins had both previously recorded with Coltrane.) Sanders was invited to join Coltrane's band in September 1965 and went on to play and record on many of Coltrane's later recordings.
In addition, drummer Rashied Ali, who would eventually join Coltrane's group, was invited to participate in the recording of Ascension, but passed up the opportunity, a decision he would soon come to regret. Saxophonist Frank Wright was also invited, but reportedly felt that his skills were not up to the demands of the music.
Recording session The recording took place, unrehearsed, at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, on June 28, 1965. At the start of the session, Coltrane handed out lead sheets. According to Archie Shepp, "The ensemble passages were based on chords, but these chords were optional... In the solo plus quartet parts there are no specified chords. These sections were to be dialogues between the soloists and the rhythm section." Marion Brown added: "Trane had obviously thought a lot about what he wanted to do, but he wrote most of it out in the studio. Then he told everybody what he wanted: He played this line and he said that everybody would play that line in the ensembles. Then he said he wanted crescendi and decrescendi after every solo. We ran through some things together, until we were together, and then we got into it."
The group recorded two takes of roughly equal duration. These would become known as Edition I and Edition II. At the end of the second take, Elvin Jones "flung his snare at the studio wall, signaling his decision that for him, the date was over." Marion Brown was more enthusiastic; later he described the session as "wildly exciting", the kind of record "you could use... to heat up the apartment on those cold winter days," and stated that both takes "had that kind of thing in them that makes people scream. The people who were in the studio were screaming. I don't know how the engineers kept the screams out of the record." John Tchicai recalled: "It was a feast, incomparable. On the day of the recording, ecstasy and excitement were the prime movers. All of us did our very best to contribute and to carry out the few instructions the Master had given us. It was very African! Our Ancestors were definitely among us more than usual!"
Coltrane later stated that, during the session, "I was so doggone busy; I was worried to death... I couldn't really enjoy the [recording] date. If it hadn't been a date, then I would have really enjoyed it." At some point, he called Albert Ayler and explained: "I recorded an album and found that I was playing just like you", to which Ayler replied: "No, man, don't you see, you were playing like yourself. You were just feeling what I feel and were just crying out for spiritual unity."
On July28, 1965, Coltrane and his quartet performed a version of Ascension on a concert at the Salle Pleyel in Paris. A recording of the performance appears on Live in Paris, incorrectly titled "Blue Valse".
Music Coltrane described Ascension in a radio interview as a "big band thing", although it resembles no big band recording made before it. The most obvious antecedent is Ornette Coleman's octet (or "double quartet") recording, Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation, which—like Ascension—is a continuous 40-minute performance with ensemble passages and without breaks. However, on Ascension (and unlike on Free Jazz), ensemble sections alternate with solos, which take up about equal space. According to Shepp, "Free Jazz created a new form, and Ascension is a further step in the development of that form." Shepp also noted the influence of Sun Ra and Cecil Taylor on the recording, and concluded: "The precedent for what John did here goes all the way back to New Orleans... This is like a New Orleans concept, but with 1965 people". (Sun Ra's influence on Ascension was also suggested by Coltrane biographer J. C. Thomas, and by Val Wilmer, who pointed out that Coltrane was exposed to Sun Ra's music through his friendship with John Gilmore.)
Structurally, Ascension is organized around a succession of modes that serve as starting points for the musicians. Ekkehard Jost identified three modes: B Aeolian, D Phrygian, and F Phrygian, while David Such added a fourth, G Lydian. Changes of mode were signalled by Coltrane, Hubbard, and Tyner. The melodic germ of Ascension is a short motif that resembles the main theme of A Love Supreme'''s "Acknowledgment" section; however, this motif is secondary in importance to the presence of descending lines that serve to define and articulate the modes. Jost noted that, in contrast with Free Jazz, "the central idea is not to produce a network of interwoven independent melodic lines, but dense sound complexes." He explained: "a large number of rhythmically independent lines are set against one another by seven wind instruments, with the resultant overlappings. This superimposition produces rapidly moving sound-fields whose rhythmic differentiation is provided as a rule by the rhythm section, rather than coming from within. When seven independent melodic-rhythmic lines coincide, the relationships between them lose clarity, fusing into a field of sound enlivened by irregular accentuations." Jost summarized this as follows: "A new type of group improvisation emerges in which melodic-motivic evolution gives way to the moulding of a total sound.… the macro-structures of the total sound are more important than the micro-structure of the parts." Similarly, Such wrote: "The overall texture in the collectively improvised sections of Ascension is extremely dense. As a result, the listener has difficulty separating the individual lines of the seven improvisers. In comparison, the three lead soloists in Coleman's Free Jazz remain distinguishable." Shepp's comments are in agreement: "The emphasis was on textures rather than the making of an organizational entity. There was unity, but it was a unity of sounds and textures rather than like an ABA approach. You can hear...a reaching for sound and an exploration of the possibilities of sound." Ben Ratliff called Ascension "the first major piece of work from the jazz avant-garde to valorize the idea not only of sheer volume but of texture in jazz-group interaction", and noted that "immediately thereafter, the idea of texture would become very basic to experimental jazz."
With regard to the solo sections, Jost also differentiated between players like Tchicai, who tended to organize their solos motivically, as opposed to "sound" players like Sanders and Shepp, who tended to use extended techniques in an expressive way. According to Jost, Coltrane's solo is a synthesis of the two approaches: "Into a context that is melodic-motivic, all possibilities of tone coloration are incorporated, partly as a constructive device—when they serve as a means of formal articulation—and partly to provide for emotional intensification".