Legendary saxophonist John Coltrane sits among the likes of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis as one of the most influential musicians in the history of jazz, and his impact on the art form continues worldwide to this day.
Coltrane’s boyhood home was High Point, North Carolina, where he attended William Penn High School (now Penn-Griffin School for the Arts) and played in the school band. He also grew up hearing music of the black church. His maternal grandfather, the Reverend William Blair, was a preacher at an African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in High Point, and his paternal grandfather, Reverend William Coltrane, was an A.M.E. Zion minister in Hamlet, North Carolina, where John was born in 1926.
In celebration of Black History Month, four of today’s leading jazz musicians, who each call the Triad home, are taking a moment to reflect on Coltrane’s life and legacy.
In this sound portrait hear University of NC Greensboro associate professors, bassist Steve Haines and saxophonist Chad Eby, trumpeter and NC A&T State University professor Mondre Moffett, and executive director of the North Carolina Jazz Repertory Orchestra, and music director for the John Coltrane Jazz Workshop in High Point, saxophonist Wally West.
