Barney Whittaker

Branford Marsalis has never hidden his debt to John Coltrane, but neither has he allowed it to define him. His quartet tackled 'A Love Supreme' in full on 2002’s Footsteps of Our Fathers, approaching the music as a living challenge rather than a sacred text. For this centenary tribute, Marsalis takes a less obvious route into Coltrane’s legacy.

Lee Morgan was one of the key musicians who helped shape hard bop's identity. As a style hard bop retained bebop’s harmonic sophistication and instrumental virtuosity but grounded them in blues, gospel and a heavier rhythmic pulse, and Morgan’s trumpet playing embodied that balance. He could negotiate intricate chord changes with remarkable fluency, yet his solos rarely sounded academic: clipped phrases, bent notes, sudden accents and strategically placed pauses gave them the urgency of speech.

Few records in the jazz canon are as audacious, playful and structurally flawless as Sonny Rollins’ 1957 masterpiece Way Out West. Recorded in an era when the piano was considered the essential harmonic anchor of any small group, Rollins did something radical: he stripped it away entirely.