We should be grateful for what we have got, however, for the tape reels concerned disappeared from view around 1968 and were only rediscovered, by chance, in 2019 (the first four tunes) and 2021 ("Africa"). Cisterna, Fred (July 23, 2023). "Album of the Week: Coltrane and Dolphy". News. Qobuz . Retrieved July 29, 2023. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month.

a b Hynes, Jim (July 14, 2023). "Seminal Never-Before-Heard 1961 Recordings Released On 'Evenings at the Village Gate: John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy' ". Glide Magazine . Retrieved July 16, 2023. In an essay in the album booklet, Alderson tells the story. Here is an extract: "In 1965 and '66, I was hired to build Bob Dylan's stage sound system and went on the road with him. Around that time, I also got involved with the Institute of Sound at Carnegie Hall, a small non-profit run by a former child actor named Richard Stryker, which was dedicated to preserving historic recordings, primarily opera.This is a crucial album. 1961 was an important, eventful year for Coltrane. He brought out the ‘My Favourite Things’ album. He started the quartet that would influence and define the 1960s. He left Atlantic and joined Impulse. He recorded the sessions at the Village Vanguard and with this quintet he toured Europe and ventured into Britain for concerts that would mystify and outrage. A photo of the marquee at the Village Gate in New York, advertising John Coltrane's performances in the summer of 1961. The degree to which this is a transitional recording is perhaps best exemplified by the early run through of Coltrane’s Impressions, first recorded in the studio in 1962 but best known from the version captured at New York’s Village Vanguard in November 1961. That version might be the finest documented example of the Coltrane/Dolphy quintet. Recorded with the same line-up as this album, it’s a euphoric, exploratory masterclass in what Coltrane was capable of in 1961. Against Jones’s driving polyrhythmic be-bop patterns Coltrane niggles away at a tiny harmonic idea reminiscent of Miles Davis’s So What, before turning the whole thing upside down and inside out, Dolphy cutting in on incendiary agitated alto sax, the duo reaching for something ancient and primal as Tyler seemingly scales the walls with his glittering keyboard runs. Male, Andrew (July 27, 2023). "John Coltrane With Eric Dolphy Evenings At The Village Gate Reviewed: Newly rediscovered sessions show a genius in transition". Mojo. ISSN 1351-0193 . Retrieved July 27, 2023. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.

a b c Chinen, Nate (May 31, 2023). "John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy's fearless experiment sets a new album ablaze". Music News. Consider This. NPR . Retrieved June 2, 2023. Few were prepared for what they heard. Critics in Downbeat expressed surprise at the vehemence and violence of the music, one called it ‘anti jazz’. ‘My Favourite Things’ album had not been released in the UK. The last time that most people had heard Coltrane on record was the quite conventional work he had recorded with Miles Davis. On the European tour that started in November 1961 the Coltrane group played on a programme after the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet: The contrast highlighted the radical nature of the Coltrane approach. The inclusion of Eric Dolphy whose playing was just as ground breaking as the leader emphasised a new direction. The correspondent from the Melody Maker said that he was bewildered by what he heard. The group was obviously exploring new ideas and new avenues. All of the material we are fortunate enough to glean from this epoch (be it studio album, live recording or otherwise) offers a glimpse of Coltrane as an artist in the midst of a supremely creative flux. With prominent sessions and extensive residencies falling in rapid succession of one another throughout the early sixties, each of these engagements provided Trane with the potential to further develop his startling vision and technique. It was during this period, in fact, that he refined his appreciation of the soprano saxophone; its appearance in the artist’s hands on the album cover of My Favourite Things(1959) would have been striking in itself, due to the instrument’s large absence from modern jazz – and that’s before we even consider the experimentation his sound was about to undergo! My Favourite Things’ starts with Dolphy on flute. Dolphy loved dissonance and unpredictability. During his short life he was just as individual as Ornette or Coltrane. Sometimes he is wilder than either. It is the sound that is unique: easily recognisable, especially when he uses the bass clarinet, as he does frequently in this session. The whoops and hollers that he uses on ‘Africa’ are a successful attempt to reproduce the character of the studio recording.

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Falsenthal, Daniel (August 1, 2023). "John Coltrane: Evenings at the Village Gate: John Coltrane With Eric Dolphy". Albums. Pitchfork Media . Retrieved August 2, 2023. To be fair, it is easy to imagine that someone who had last heard Coltrane play "When Lights Are Low" as a member of Miles Davis' quintet (as on Davis' 1956 Prestige album Cookin') might have needed smelling salts on hearing his performance with Dolphy at the Gate. It is worth remembering, too, that Coltrane's Africa/Brass (1961), which featured Dolphy, had yet to be released when the Gate recordings were made. This meant that "Greensleeves" and, more to the point, the turbulent "Africa," were likely to be new to many people in the audience, as would be Dolphy himself to some of them. And some audience members may well have been at the club on the strength of Coltrane's current radio hit "My Favorite Things." But the vibe in the room is palpably onside. If the gatekeepers did not get it, it sounds like the paying customers did.

Pearson, Chris (July 5, 2023). "John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy review—'lost' recording shows jazz greats at their most compelling". Album Review. The Times. ISSN 0140-0460 . Retrieved July 5, 2023.

The performance took place just three years before Dolphy died aged 36, meaning the archive material is a special insight into his and Coltrane’s brief musical partnership, which encompassed the albums Olé Coltrane, Africa/Brass, Live! at the Village Vanguard and Impressions, released between 1961 and 1963. It is the only live recording of the group’s legendary Village Gate performances and it features the only known non-studio recording of Africa – extended to nearly 23 minutes. This album is an important addition to the work of Coltrane. The chronology shows that. In 1961 the contract with Atlantic was finished and in May and June the Africa/ Brass sessions were completed for Impulse. Africa/Brass was obviously an indication that insurgent ideas would be followed. The inclusion of Eric Dolphy during the engagement at the Village Gate during the summer was important. He had worked on the Africa/Brass sessions. The playing at the Village Gate in the summer is a foretaste what the Quintet would achieve at the Village Vanguard in the autumn. The Impulse albums were groundbreaking and set the pattern before the group set off for the European tour promoted by Norman Granz which started immediately after the Vanguard engagement.