Where Miles Davis' Kind of Blue celebrated pure melody, John Coltrane's Giant Steps is a flood of harmonic virtuosity. Featuring some of the same players as on the Miles' album, Giant Steps dances all over a maelstrom on interplay among improvising musicians, moving in and out of each other's paths up and down scales that hadn't been invented the day before.
A few years ago, I took this album to a meeting of people diagnosed with various mental illnesses and played it at a low to moderate volume in a far corner. This group of about a dozen heavily medicated people had always been annoyingly quiet--even sedate. At this meeting there was a very obvious sense of tension in the air, and several of the participants stood and told off one another. Two of the twelve never returned. Higher praise for recorded music does not exist.
--Phil Mershon
A few years ago, I took this album to a meeting of people diagnosed with various mental illnesses and played it at a low to moderate volume in a far corner. This group of about a dozen heavily medicated people had always been annoyingly quiet--even sedate. At this meeting there was a very obvious sense of tension in the air, and several of the participants stood and told off one another. Two of the twelve never returned. Higher praise for recorded music does not exist.
--Phil Mershon