John Coltrane on "Crescent"

Over the course of the past few lessons I've had with Miguel Zenón, I've been working on memorizing John Coltrane's solo on "Crescent," from Crescent (1964). Miguel's told me that this era of Coltrane—the increasingly exploratory stuff on Impulse! from 1962 up until some of the really outer-space stuff in '65—is his favorite because of the way Coltrane plays with the intensity of other 'free' players (Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders) while filling his phrases with a density of harmonic information that is both incredibly precise and incredibly creative. I finished learning the solo this week, which means I'll start working on memorizing "Dear Old Stockholm" from Impressions (1963); I'll be working out a lot of the ideas in "Crescent" in the months to come, I'm sure. Here's the solo, with a few comments here and there on what Miguel and I came up with w/r/t what's going on, m/h/r:

 Over the dominant chords, Trane plays a lot of dominant 7, natural 9, b13 (mm. 14-15, over A7, and mm. 21-22, over Bb7). Miguel called my attention to the way Trane created a sense of kaleidoscopic harmonic motion over static minor chords with the kinds of sounds he switched between: dorian, melodic minor, pentatonic, and inserting passing dominant arpeggios or arpeggio fragments and/or other passing substitutions.

A section of the line Trane plays at m. 38 is strikingly similar to one Michael Brecker plays on his intro to "Delta City Blues." This probably isn't a coincidence! 

 Miguel helpfully suggested a possible implied cycle of major third substitutions over the concert A7 in mm. 62-3 (in concert: Amaj7 C7  Fmaj7#11 Ab7 Dbmaj resolving up a half step to Dm7).

 Another possible set of Coltrane subs in mm. 98-99: (concert) F7 Bbmaj7 Db7 Gbmaj7 A7 resolving directly to Dm.

C

Bb

Eb