John Coltrane’s Both Directions At Once: The Lost Album Is a Fascinating Piece of Jazz History

Not until the last two years of his life did John Coltrane?really stop performing jazz standards. He began to focus on ecstatic group improvisations (Ascension), harmony-free meanderings (see Interstellar Space), and more, experiments which set a template for so much of the free jazz and spiritual jazz that would be made in the…