Jazz legend John Coltrane’s son hits the high notes

Ravi Coltrane has a tough task: honour his father John and fellow legend Miles Davis without imitating them, he said, juice in hand during an interview in Poland. The younger Coltrane has teamed up with multiple Grammy winner Terence Blanchard for a series of concerts across Europe marking the centennials of his father and Davis which will culminate at the revered Grand Rex in Paris — a venue that meant a lot to both men. “If you’re doing a tribute to somebody... the assumption might be that we’re going to be imitating their style,” Coltrane — named after Ravi Shankar, the Indian sitar player who inspired The Beatles and a host of other Western musicians — said in Wroclaw.

“To really truly honour them, it’s not to copy them, but to peer in and try to find our own voices within the repertoire that they play,” he said.

His collaborator, five-time Grammy-winning trumpet player and composer Blanchard, said the younger Coltrane was a resounding success like his father.

“It’s not about his last name,” he said of Coltrane, who has performed with the likes of Carlos Santana, Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner and Chick Corea. “It’s about what he’s doing as an artist.” “The difficult thing to do is to find our own personal way with the music,” he said, calling it “more rewarding” as a result.

Together on stage, the pair strike contrasting notes — Blanchard raising his horn to the ceiling while a demurer Coltrane undulates through his solos with depth and precision. While not related to Miles Davis, Blanchard — like many trumpet players — is deeply influenced by the jazz great, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and branded “the most revered jazz trumpeter of all time” by Rolling Stone magazine. Like Coltrane, he does not emulate Davis.

“The easiest thing would be for me to go up there and try to play like Miles Davis... yet that would be the hardest thing,” he said. “You can’t recreate that time from which those things were created,” he added, referencing the social and political tumult of the 1960s.

“There was a lot of suffering going on in the world,” he said, adding: “They (Davis and Coltrane) didn’t turn a blind eye to that.” Blanchard, who has written two operas and dozens of film and television scores, is passionate about mentoring and educating younger musicians. “That’s the thing I always tell my students,” he said. “Be a person first ... and learn how to use all of the tools musically to express what it is you’re feeling inside.”

Ravi Coltrane said it was Blanchard who came to him with the idea of doing a joint tribute, something he might have otherwise turned down. “He’s probably the only one I would have agreed to do this with,” he said, reminiscing on their first meetings in New York in the 1990s, where Coltrane went to begin his career. It’s a harkening back to the collaboration between Davis and the older Coltrane — whose 1959 joint album “Kind of Blue” is lauded by many critics as the greatest jazz record ever made.

Ahead of the concert at the Grand Rex, Coltrane and Blanchard reflected on the French capital’s influence on their mentors, themselves, and the genre. “Paris has always had a special place in my heart,” Blanchard said, recalling his New Orleans origins and the French influences he grew up around.

Miles Davis spent considerable time in Paris, playing concerts, recording the score to film noir classic “Elevator to the Gallows,” and — like many of his generation — seeking refuge from the racial discrimination of the United States.

“Bringing this show there, given Miles’s relationship with Paris, is very powerful and very meaningful for me,” Blanchard adds.

For Ravi Coltrane, the concert is one of many celebrations of the work of his father, his mother pianist Alice Coltrane, and the myriad other mentors and collaborators he has played with and learned from over the course of his career. “The reality is we pay tribute to these artists every day,” he says, “every time we pick up our instruments, in some way we’re paying homage and honour to the men and women who have gotten us this far”.

“It never goes away”.

Agence France-Presse