Coltrane and Dolphy Live! Magic at the Village Gate

Evenings at the Village Gate: John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy is a 2023 live album recorded in 1961 featuring American jazz musicians John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy, released on Impulse! Records.

By 1961, Coltrane had begun experimenting with modes and genre, moving towards the avant-garde sound that would be featured on records like Africa/Brass.[2] This period of experimentation proved highly controversial and Coltrane and collaborator Eric Dolphy faced criticism that their music during this period was “anti-jazz”. The recordings on this album are from a brief residency in mid-1961 that the duo had at Village Gate and were recorded for posterity’s sake by engineer Richard Alderson. They were rediscovered decades later in a New York Public Library collection.

Impressions is from Jazz gehört und gesehen (Jazz heard und seen). Jazz gehört und gesehen was a Südwestfunk series dedicated to the presentation of jazz music, which was broadcast from 1955 to 1972 on the first ARD television program in Germany.

Joachim Ernst Berendt produced and hosted the series, directed by Horst Lippman in the 1960s.

The first broadcast was on January 11, 1955. Also present in the first show were Marianne Lutz-Pastré, Caterina Valente, the Kurt Edelhagen Orchestra and the Edelhagen All-Stars. The series was broadcast every two months, with more than 75 programs by 1972. The first episodes were live productions without recordings; later episodes were initially produced on 35mm film, and broadcast at a later date.

In addition to many American jazz greats such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, George Lewis, Baden Powell, Carmen McRae, Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy and the Dave Brubeck Quartet, many European bands and musicians such as the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band, the Heinz Sauer Trio (1960) or the German All Stars (Klaus Doldinger, Conny Jackel, Albert Mangels) made guest appearances on Berendt’s show dorff, Emil Mangelsdorff, Hans Koller, Helmut Brandt, Rolf Kühn, Gerry Weinkopf, Inge Brandenburg, 1963). From 1962 to 1966, the show also broadcast concerts at the American Folk Blues Festival; the 38th episode was the 1965 film “Jazz from Poland” (directed by Janusz Majewski), which featured the groups of Krzysztof Komeda, Zbigniew Namysłowski and Andrzej Trzaskowski, among others. The programs are repeated in the SWR series Jazz Masters

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