ASCENSION

An adulatory account of the musical achievements of jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. Most musicologists would agree that Coltrane (1926-67) was a seminal force in contemporary jazz, but this comparison by Nisenson ('Round About Midnight, 1982) of Coltrane's ``spiritual quest...to find the essence of music and the mind of God'' to Einstein's search for a unified field theory is a little too much. Nisenson painstakingly traces Coltrane's career from his earliest recordings with Dizzy Gillespie and his work as a member of Miles Davis's legendary late-50's quintet through his own classic ensembles and later forays into free jazz. But the author is blindsided by devotion to his subject and often acts as a shrill apologist for the excesses of Coltrane's music rather than offering a balanced guide (he calls Coltrane's album A Love Supreme one of ``the most moving and genuinely spiritual documents of our century''). Nisenson's hero-worship carries over into his comments about Coltrane the man as he marvels over Coltrane's ``sheer courage'' in following his muse and the ``enormous amount of sacrifice and continual growth'' that the musician's career embodied. Nisenson is at his best in describing Coltrane's fellow musicians, including the egotistical Miles Davis; the far-out Sun Ra, who created an entire self-mythology to accompany his innovative music; and the shrieking saxophone player Pharaoh Sanders, who was a close associate of Coltrane's during his final, most radical years. The author correctly identifies Coltrane's inspiration in the complex rhythmic bases of non-Western, modal music, and his influence on everyone from psychedelic rock stars to today's devotees of world music. Finally, Nisenson discusses Coltrane's legacy, finding fault with the empty commercialism of 70's jazz-rock fusion artists, as well as with the ``brittle and heartless'' neoclassicism of today's jazz superstars, such as Wynton Marsalis. As Nisenson says, more ``gaseous prose has been written about Coltrane'' than any other musician—but, unfortunately, he, too, generates more hot air than light.