The world according to John Coltrane / Performances of Giants steps- So What - My Favorite Things and many more / Directed by Robert Plamer / Written by Robert Palmer / Produced by Toby Byron & Richard Saylor / DVD

Format: NTSC

Run time: 59 Minutes

UPC: 880242571083

• Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ Yes
• MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ Unrated (Not Rated)
• Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.5 x 0.7 x 5.4 inches; 4 Ounces
• Media Format ‏ : ‎ Black & White, DVD, NTSC
• Run time ‏ : ‎ 59 minutes
• Actors ‏ : ‎ Coltrane, John
• Studio ‏ : ‎ Bmg Special Product
• Country of Origin ‏ : ‎ Austria
• Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1

John Coltrane is easily one of the key innovators, visionaries, and virtuosos of American Jazz. Coltrane's spiritually influenced and challenging music not only turned the jazz world upside down in the 1960s, but directly impacted all modern music for decades to follow. It is this relationship between music and spirituality that is the core of John Coltrane: The World According to John Coltrane. Produced with his wife's cooperation, The World According to John Coltrane is truly a heartfelt documentary on his work and influence on the music community. The bulk of the 60-minute documentary focuses on Coltrane's eastern spirituality/musical direction in the 1960s as told through the voices of friends, fellow musicians, and admirers. Perhaps the most impressive aspects of this documentary are its live footage clips. Listening to Coltrane is extremely powerful, but watching him pour his heart and soul into his sax is absolutely awe-inspiring. These clips will leave you yearning to see the entire performances, unedited. Unfortunately, this is the DVD's one fault; no extras of the performances in their entirety. Oh well. A fan can dream.

In his short life, John Coltrane continually pushed the boundaries of music. From swing to bebop to hard bop to free jazz, Coltrane was a restless seeker of new sounds. Inspired by the hypnotic, trance-inducing traditional music of North Africa and Asia, Coltrane created a new kind of music that fused jazz and Eastern spirituality.

The World According to John Coltrane tells the story of Coltrane’s quest, from his childhood in a deeply religious household in North Carolina to his early days playing saxophone in the Navy, to his apprenticeship with Miles Davis in the 1950s and his emergence as a bandleader and innovator in the 1960s. Most of the one-hour film is devoted to Coltrane’s later period, when he came into his own. The film is not a biography, in the traditional sense. There is very little about Coltrane’s personal life — his marriages, children, drug problems and declining health. Director Robert Palmer focuses instead on Coltrane’s journey as a musician.

The World According to John Coltrane was made in 1990, and includes interviews with Coltrane’s second wife, pianist Alice Coltrane, and a number of other musicians who knew Coltrane and played with him, including saxophonist Wayne Shorter, drummer Rashied Ali and Pianist Tommy Flanagan. It provides some excellent insights into one of the 20th century’s greatest musicians.