On the 100th anniversary of the birth of John Coltrane, legendary jazz label Impulse! Records have announced the upcoming release of The Tiberi Tapes, private recordings of John Coltrane captured during performances in clubs in New York and Philadelphia throughout the 1960s.
Recorded by saxophonist and educator Frank Tiberi beginning in 1960, The Tiberi Tapes have been the subject of rumor and intense speculation throughout the jazz world, especially after Coltrane’s untimely death in 1967 at the age of 40. However, the public will have a chance to listen to these recordings for the first time on November 6 when the collection is released globally.
The album captures Coltrane as he established himself as a bandleader during a period of artistic transformation. At the time, Tiberi was an active member of Philadelphia’s music community and took an interest in Coltrane’s style of playing. However, he began to note a major difference between the Coltrane records he owned and hearing him play live in the clubs, noting a sense of freedom, inspiration and relaxation.
This difference compelled Tiberi to take a deeper look into the music of Coltrane. So, in the summer of 1960, Tiberi bought a Concertone TR-100 Transicorder, a portable reel-to-reel machine with a small condenser microphone, and began carrying it to Coltrane’s performances in Philadelphia and New York. Sitting among the audience, Tiberi kept the recorder in a cloth bag on his lap, running the microphone beneath his coat to capture the group directly or through a nearby speaker.
“My main purpose of recording him was to really, to get information and harmonic values, so that I could be able to really play myself,” Tiberi later recalled in an interview.
One of those recordings, a performance of Coltrane’s “Giant Steps,” was released as a single in anticipation of the release.
