by A.D. Amorosi | Jazz Times

"No one could ever sound like John Coltrane.”

That’s what Ravi Coltrane told me around the time of the 2021 reissue of Giant Steps, the 60th anniversary package.

Having previously interviewed Ravi about his own solo work over the years, it’s been easy to avoid the topic of his old man, as the younger saxophonist, now 60, is his own player with his own pugnacious, post-bop wild style and fantastic taste in sidepeople.

Ravi has also played with the old heads (Jack DeJohnette, Elvin Jones) and broken (very) young prodigious talents such as pianist Gadi Lehavi, always refusing to rest on any laurels.

The curatorial job that Ravi Coltrane does for labels such as Rhino/Atlantic, Impulse! and Blue Note, in relation to all his father’s reissues and newly discovered materials, is just that: the job. And it’s a great one, because first and foremost, Ravi is a fan. “I’m less a historian than a follower for a majority of my life,” he told me. “I am a lover of this music.”

Yet he never exploits that heritage. He might play his father’s songs on live gigs, but you don’t go to see Ravi Coltrane in order to hear John Coltrane.

That is, until July 22 in Philadelphia — one of John Coltrane’s old stomping grounds — for a program called “Coltrane 100: Legacy.”

Here at the Highmark Mann amphitheater for the first time, Ravi relived his father’s music in full through a series of vivid string, reeds and brass orchestrations by arrangers Tim Davies, Steven Feifke, Andy Milne and composer Carlos Simon, the curator of the show, which was Ravi’s debut in a symphonic setting.

Together with his quartet (Philly-born drummer Johnathan Blake, pianist David Virelles, bassist Dezron Douglas) and the Philadelphia Orchestra with conductor Edwin Outwater, Ravi pursued a goal for “Coltrane 100: Legacy” that was likely to stretch the boundaries of the already boundaryless, while celebrating his father's spirit.

Mostly, the team did just that, even when I might have wanted something more from the proceedings. Did I want Ravi and the group to go farther out still, every time they soloed? Yes. And of course, in spanning John Coltrane’s aesthetic in this, a first symphonic setting, I wanted to hear (if we’re going for “the hits”) moments such as “My Favorite Things,” along with rarities such as “While My Lady Sleeps,” instead of tracks from Trane’s time with Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis which we got in “Crepuscule with Nellie” and “So What,” respectively.

But sometimes, instead of giant steps, you get baby steps. Which thankfully were also wondrous.

As a cool breeze blew through the indoor-outdoor space, the familiar opening strains of “Blue Train” were sumptuously redoubled by the orchestra, with Coltrane playing a tastefully squeaky solo and Blake frenetically running roughshod (effortlessly, as is his wont) across his toms.

It was here, in Simon’s arrangement of “Blue Train” where a pattern emerged that would be executed for Coltrane’s songs for the rest of the evening. A certain showiness took root, something cinematic, even sprightly, with tones that existed somewhere between Neal Hefti’s early 1960s work, Tom Pierson’s take on Gershwin for the score of Woody Allen’s Manhattan, and Leonard Benstein’s own charts for the filmed West Side Story with Sid Ramin, Jack Mason and Irwin Kostal — all with just tinkling xylophone in the mix to rival Virelles’s ticklish displays.

That orchestral vibe carried into the prayerful “Naima,” with Ravi’s tear-weeping solo turned into passionate pleading musicality by its close; a grand, athletic “Giant Steps” with its racing saxophone runs bound to the drummer’s thick, rolling rhythms; and the lusciously lolli-gagging blues of “So What.”

“A lot of this music was written by my father right here in this city,” said Coltrane by way of introducing “Acknowledgement,” the first holy movement of A Love Supreme, with its harpist’s soft strokes, a cellist’s drone and a solo sax reverie that was at once piously reverent yet stirringly unique — ripe with heritage, without hint of imitation.

After a brief intermission, Coltrane came back to the stage with a noir-ish take on “In a Sentimental Mood” that reminded me of the 1963 film Charade; a thunderingly dramatic arrangement of “Crescent” that overwhelmed its melody and the quartet’s gentler idea for the song; and “Alabama,” an aptly abstract plea for peace and a righteous show of rage, where Ravi’s pensive but colorful snake-like wriggles ran in tandem with that of the arrangement’s searing strings and Douglas’s warm, thrumming bass.

The evening closed with “Impressions,” similar to “Alabama” but with way more thrusting swing in its stride, to the sound of thundering applause, the likes of which you’d hear if the Foo Fighters had just played their encore.

That same enthusiasm ran throughout the evening, not only with the crowd yelling out requests (this was Philadelphia), but with Ravi Coltrane and his fluid, flexing ensemble showing off real confidence while tackling its first orchestral John Coltrane tribute.