John Coltrane’s ‘The Tiberi Tapes Box Set’ Announced On 100th Anniversary of Music Icon’s Birth
Saxophonist Frank Tiberi’s private recordings of Coltrane will finally see release after more than six decades.
John Coltrane, the iconic jazz saxophonist who stands as one of the most acclaimed and influential musicians of the 20th century, was born 100 years ago today. To mark the occasion, Impulse! Records has announced a new Coltrane box set featuring never-before-heard private recordings.
Billed as the centerpiece of this year’s Coltrane 100 centennial celebrations, The Tiberi Tapes compiles the long-mythologized private recordings of saxophonist Frank Tiberi, who captured audio of Coltrane and his band at dozens of New York and Philadelphia club shows from 1960 onward. Tiberi recorded the shows as a way to study Coltrane’s craft and improve his own playing, citing his belief that Coltrane’s studio albums did not capture the full splendor of his talent.
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“I had all of them,” Tiberi says of Coltrane’s albums in an essay written by music historian Ashley Kahn. “To me they were not anywhere near the kind of playing and inspiration that he would display at a club.” So Tiberi brought a portable reel-to-reel machine (specifically, the Concertone TR-100 Transicorder) and a small condenser microphone to several Coltrane shows, hiding the machine in his bag and the mic under his coat.
“My main purpose of recording him was to get information and harmonic values, so that I could be able to really play myself,” he recalls. By the time of Coltrane’s death in 1967, Tiberi had more than 80 reels containing over 26 hours of music. Though he studied the material intensely, incorporating his findings into his own playing and teaching, he’s never shared the contents of the tapes publicly until now.
Out Nov. 6, The Tiberi Tapes features 11 selections from Tiberi’s archive, available in 4LP, 3CD, and digital formats. The collection begins with two versions of “Giant Steps” recorded at radically different tempos, 226 and 262 BPM. Also included are readings of “Thing In D Flat,” “Lover,” “West 42nd St.,” “Impressions,” an untitled original in F minor, “Satellite,” “Good Bait,” “Resolution,” and “It’s Easy To Remember.” The 226 BPM version of “Giant Steps” is available now as an advance taste of The Tiberi Tapes.
