How Ravi Coltrane Transcended "The Most Imposing Surname in Jazz"

Here’s a truth about the saxophonist and composer Ravi Coltrane that should be pointed out, in case you’re a smart, curious culture fan who hasn’t closely followed jazz over the past quarter-century. Even if he didn’t have the most imposing surname in all of jazz, Ravi would still be an SFJAZZ Resident Artistic Director whose upcoming five-night run is no doubt a highlight of the summer.

Coltrane’s residency kicks off with a Listening Party on July 23, followed by four nights of music from two groups: Coltraxx, featuring pianist David Virelles, bassist Dezron Douglas and drummer Johnathan Blake (7/24-25, with a livestream at sfjazz.org on 7/25); and the Ravi Coltrane Quintet, with trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, trombonist Robin Eubanks, keyboardist Gadi Lehavi and drummer Elé Salif Howell (7/26-27).

Fans of Ravi’s monumental parents, the saxophonist John Coltrane and the keyboardist, harpist and spiritual leader Alice Coltrane, should go to these shows because the program will be thrilling. It will also most certainly not function as a rote homage to their favorite recordings by John and Alice Coltrane — even when the set list includes the music of John and Alice Coltrane. And therein lies a most critical component of the brilliance of Ravi Coltrane, whose ascent has presented an exemplar of, first, developing a unique sound despite the shroud of an insurmountable legacy; and, later, honoring that legacy with the utmost grace and good taste.

It’s rare in the arts when the scion of a pivotal force builds a career with inarguable integrity, earning their reputation with work that is excellent but also a thing apart from their birthright. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Sofia Coppola come to mind, but examples are thin on the ground. So how did it come to be with Ravi Coltrane?

Last year, I spoke with the harpist Brandee Younger on the occasion of her own SFJAZZ Artistic Residency, which featured Ravi as part of a tribute to Alice Coltrane. I asked Younger how she understood the slippery distinctiveness of his sound, the notion that he’s a saxophonist who bolsters the memory of John Coltrane without impersonating the aesthetic. Her answer was quick, and obvious. “I see him more as someone who was raised by his mom,” she said. “Right?”

John Coltrane died of liver cancer in 1967, just three weeks before his son Ravi’s second birthday. He was 40 years old and is now largely regarded as the closest thing jazz has to a deity. Ravi grew up in the San Fernando Valley, in an environment of accommodation and anonymity. His mother made sure that music, including his father’s, was a constant, but she didn’t pressure Ravi to pursue it, and for a period his ambitions leaned toward film school. The family name didn’t overwhelm him, either; Ravi has recalled that, growing up in suburban L.A. in the ’70s, it didn’t carry the cachet or even recognition you might expect. He played the clarinet in his high school marching band, and his mother gave him a soprano saxophone when he was in his mid-teens, but his enthusiasm fell away after his older brother, John Jr., died in a car accident in 1982. A few years of uncertainty and malaise followed.

During the mid-80s he began listening anew to those recordings that his mother had played at home. He heard them with intent, gaining a fuller understanding of his father’s biography as well as a sense of purpose. In 1986 he began studying the saxophone at the California Institute of the Arts, or CalArts, where his teachers included the bassist Charlie Haden, who’d founded CalArts’ jazz program just a few years prior.

He relocated to New York in the early ’90s and, in terms of career-building, demonstrated a keen knack for restraint. He gained important early experience with Elvin Jones and Rashied Ali, two drummers who made epochal music with John Coltrane, but cultivated a shrewd aversion to the kind of opportunism that put “son of Coltrane” marketing ahead of meaningful development. Other formative mentors included the pianist Geri Allen and saxophonist Steve Coleman, two visionaries who helped define the language of jazz modernism that came together in the decades after his father’s passing. Ravi didn’t make his own debut as a bandleader until 1998, with Moving Pictures.

Since then, he’s become one of jazz’s marquee performers, recording for pedigreed labels and leading working groups through a steady schedule of club and festival dates. He’s also been a faithful steward of his heritage, shepherding archival releases and live projects and basically protecting his parents’ art as if it were his own. Over the years, more and more of those tributes have focused solely on his late mother, a touchstone of spiritual chic whose influence and profile have exploded in this century.

But what of that sound, and that approach to the saxophone? On tenor, he makes a series of contrasts work for him. His sound is dark and complex but also cool and crisp. He isn’t compelled to constantly assert himself, and his phrases can feel like a pensive, interior conversation, with asides and pauses and unanswered questions. His soprano work doesn’t possess the polemical tone and attack his father had on that horn; he’s energetic but limber and airy, with a stately timbre that can get downright orchestral.

Ravi doesn’t do the “spiritual jazz” tropes that followed in his father’s wake — the overblown marathon choruses that replace real passion with athletic vanity. I’ve heard him live more times than I can recall, and what hasn’t faded in reflection is the control and discernment within his considerable power. To his credit, he’s hard to deconstruct. I needed a second set of ears.

I tapped a friend, the critic Ben Ratliff, whose tenure at The New York Times overlapped with Ravi’s rise and who unpacked John Coltrane’s work at book length in 2007’s Coltrane: The Story of a Sound. I asked him how he thinks John and Ravi sound fundamentally different, and where specifically he hears pieces of John in Ravi’s playing. He responded:

One of the things I admire about Ravi is how little he sounds like his father, in terms of his saxophone tone and phrasing and patterning and everything else, all the way down into the basic mood of his playing. But I do think that when his band plays in a free or exploratory or open-ended context, both his playing and the way he steers the band can exhibit a similar kind of mysterious conviction, which for the listener can result in some very satisfying where-is-this-going, what-tune-are-we-in feelings. Still, it’s contemporary: To me he never sounds like someone from the ’60s, much less his own father.

I concur. He doesn’t sound like his father or his mother; he doesn’t really sound like anyone except himself. Which means he sounds exactly like a Coltrane.

SFJAZZ Resident Artistic Director Ravi Coltrane’s week includes a Listening Party hosted by journalist Lily O’Brien (7/23) and performances with his Coltraxx Project (7/24-25) and his Quartet (7/26-27). Tickets and more information are available here. The 7/25 Coltraxx performance will be streamed live at sfjazz.org. More details are available here. 

Evan Haga is the Senior Content Writer for Music & Arts, part of the Guitar Center Company. He was previously the editor-in-chief of JazzTimes magazine and an editor and curator at the music-streaming platform TIDAL. He lives with his wife and daughter in Maryland.