‘A Ritual for John Coltrane’

The centenary of John Coltrane’s birth in Hamlet, North Carolina falls later this month; many commemorative events will take place. Yesterday afternoon at Cafe Oto, in the first of four monthly Sunday matinee concerts, Evan Parker led something he titled ‘A Ritual for John Coltrane’, which turned out to be the sort of tribute that summons the spirit of the dedicatee without trying to mimic the substance. I may have mentioned before that the first time I interviewed Evan, at his home in the early ’70s, I was impressed by a shelf of LPs with orange and black spines: Coltrane’s albums on Impulse, of course, in their original US editions. Over the years I learned more about his love of the great man’s work, and the inspirational effect it had on the development of his own playing. Yesterday Evan sat at the centre of an expanded performance space, with his soprano saxophone and a suspended gong. He was flanked by Matt Wright, his partner in Trance Map, at a table with a laptop and a…