Live in Japan is a four-disc box set by American saxophonistJohn Coltrane and his last group, a quintet featuring Coltrane, his wife/pianist Alice, saxophonist/bass clarinetist Pharoah Sanders, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Rashied Ali. The 4-CD set compiles all the music issued as three albums in the seventies by Impulse!; Concert In Japan, Coltrane In Japan and Second Night In Tokyo. The first CD issues were by Impulse! Japan as two 2-CD sets: Live In Japan Vol. 1 and Live In Japan Vol. 2. The US 4-CD edition includes both of these volumes, with identical mastering from the original mono tapes. The side six interview from "Second Night In Tokyo" has never been reissued on any CD edition. Recorded live on Coltrane's only Japanese tour in July 1966 at two Tokyo venues, Shinjuku Kosei Nenkin Hall and Sankei Hall, it is taken from mono radio broadcasts. Unusually for these players, both Coltrane and Sanders sometimes play alto saxophone in these recordings. By this point in his career, Coltrane was firmly enmeshed into the avant-garde style of jazz. Sanders, who was an innovator of free jazz, influenced Coltrane's playing through his technical use of overblowing and fierce vibrations of the reed. Both saxophone players use multiphonics, overtones, and other extended musical techniques. Ben Ratliff described the recording as "a record of long-form stamina, closer than any other recording to what performances had actually been like for about five years..." Regarding Coltrane's playing on Peace on Earth, Ratliff wrote: "he displays a technique that had never been more stunning, with rapid interrogrations of harmony and extreme dynamics - from mild susurrations to a stretch before the end of this solo where he packs so much force into the horn that it sounds as if it might burst."
Brief background
At the time Coltrane and his quintet were invited to tour Japan in July 1966, he was, according to the Japanese jazz magazine Swing Journal, the most popular musician in Japan, with albums selling as many as 30,000 copies each. The members of the group arrived by plane in Tokyo on July 8 and were treated like visiting dignitaries, with several thousand fans greeting the plane. The group's schedule was grueling, and involved playing seventeen concerts over fourteen days. During the tour, a number of Japanese jazz musicians sat in with the group, and Coltrane and Sanders were presented with alto saxophones by the Yamaha Instrument Company, with the understanding that the musicians would play the instruments and offer advice. Coltrane also participated in at least one press conference, and took time to visit the War Memorial Park in Nagasaki. Despite the exhausting itinerary, Coltrane biographer Eric Nisenson called Coltrane's Japan tour "the event that was probably the greatest single triumph of his life". While in Japan, Coltrane began experiencing headaches that foreshadowed the health problems that would lead to his death in 1967. After Coltrane's death, Rashied Ali noticed that a number of the photographs that he had taken during the Japan tour showed Coltrane holding his hand over his liver, "like he was trying to stop that pain he must have been feeling all by himself."
Track listing
All compositions by John Coltrane except as indicated
Disc One
Afro Blue - 38:49 Previously released on Second Night In Tokyo
Peace on Earth - 26:25 Previously released on Second Night In Tokyo
Disc Two
Crescent - 54:33 Previously released on Second Night In Tokyo
Disc Three
Peace on Earth - 25:05 Previously released on Concert in Japan and Coltrane In Japan
Leo - 44:49 Previously released on Concert in Japan and Coltrane In Japan
