John Coltrane - Ascension: Edition I & II (Verve Vault Series)

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Verve Vault Series 180g Black Vinyl Gatefold Jacket
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Product details

  • Label Verve
  • Format 2 x Vinyl LP, Album, Reissue, 180g, Gatefold
  • Format details Verve Vault Series 180g Black Vinyl Gatefold Jacket
  • Media 2 x Vinyl
  • Release date Jun 19, 2026
  • Originally released 1966
  • Region US
  • Genres Jazz
  • Catalog number 95711798
  • UPC 199957117982
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Verve Vault Series 180g Black Vinyl 2LP in Gatefold Jacket

This Verve Vault Series double LP puts both takes of Ascension on vinyl together, which Verve's own store copy describes as a first for the album on LP. Edition I fills LP 1 across sides A and B, Edition II fills LP 2 across sides C and D, and the lacquers for the second record carry the words "Edition II" in the runout, an echo of how Impulse! marked the take in 1966.

Ryan K. Smith cut the lacquers at Sterling Sound from the original stereo analog tapes, and the two records are pressed on 180-gram black vinyl at Optimal in Germany and housed in a gatefold jacket. Verve and Impulse! are sister labels inside the Verve Label Group, and the Vault line draws all-analog reissues from the Verve, Impulse! and Mercury catalogs. UK Jazz News places this release within John Coltrane 100, the Coltrane estate's year-long centennial program.

The session took place unrehearsed on June 28, 1965, at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, with Bob Thiele producing, and the ensemble cut two complete takes. Impulse! first issued the second take in February 1966 as A-95; Coltrane then asked for the first take to be used instead, and later copies carried it with "Edition II" etched in the dead wax. That is why the take recorded first is the one numbered second. Impulse!'s 2000 CD held both takes; vinyl buyers had been choosing one until now.

Coltrane expanded his quartet to eleven players for the date. Alongside his tenor saxophone, McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums, he brought in trumpeters Freddie Hubbard and Dewey Johnson, saxophonists Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, Marion Brown and John Tchicai, and a second bassist, Art Davis. Shepp later noted that Coltrane "took no more solo time than anybody else." Sanders joined Coltrane's band that September.

Ensemble passages alternate with solos across each roughly 40-minute performance, a structure that sets it apart from its nearest precedent, Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz. AllMusic called Ascension "the single recording that placed John Coltrane firmly into the avant-garde."

Tracklist

LP 1: Ascension (Edition I)

Side A

  1. Ascension (Part 1)

Side B

  1. Ascension (Part 2)

LP 2: Ascension (Edition II)

Side C

  1. Ascension (Part 1)

Side D

  1. Ascension (Part 2)

UPC: 199957117982
Label: Verve
Release Date: 6.19.26
Format: Vinyl