Meditations (Verve Vault Series)

Recorded in late 1965, Meditations finds John Coltrane pushing the spiritual suite form of A Love Supreme into fiercer, more turbulent territory. Pharoah Sanders joins Coltrane on tenor, while McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones create a rhythm section that can feel devotional one moment and volcanic the next. The album’s five-part arc moves from dense, overlapping cries to passages of remarkable calm, with Garrison’s bass providing a steady center amid Jones’s rolling percussion and the two saxophones’ ecstatic exchange.

This is a key bridge between the tightly focused classic quartet recordings and the freer, large-scale surge of Ascension. It also offers a fascinating contrast with First Meditations, the earlier quartet version of the same suite, which is more spacious and restrained. The Verve Vault Series edition is a welcome way back into one of Coltrane’s most searching records, an album whose intensity can be overwhelming at first but reveals more shape, tenderness, and purpose with every return listen.