Philadelphia Celebrates John Coltrane’s 100th Birthday 

This week marks John Coltrane’s 100th birthday, and Philadelphia is pulling out all the stops to celebrate the musical legend’s life and legacy. 

WHYY reports that throughout the week, the city of Philadelphia is hosting several film screenings, poetry readings, concerts, and lectures about Coltrane’s life and work. While Coltrane was born on Sept. 23, 1926, in Hamlet, North Carolina, he spent a significant period of his life in Philadelphia’s Strawberry Mansion neighborhood. Coltrane’s time in Philadelphia is credited with being essential to his development as a musician. 

“He spent many of his formative years on North 33rd Street in a row home that he bought for his mother with the GI Bill,” Gerald Veasley, a jazz bass guitarist, West Philly native, and president of Jazz Philadelphia, told ABC 6. “There, he wrote a lot of the classics, and he walked a lot of the same streets that we walk and performed with many of his contemporaries. In a lot of ways, Philadelphia can rightfully claim this as being an anchor for this great man.”

Coltrane moved to New York in 1958, but never lost his connection to Philadelphia. He regularly returned to perform and often recruited Philly musicians when he went on tour. Even when he lived in New York, he still returned to his Philly home first after each tour. 

Coltrane died from liver cancer at the far too young age of 40. Despite his relatively short time with us, Coltrane redefined jazz music as we know it. Those who were able to see Coltrane perform describe it as a mind-altering, life-changing experience. 

“There’s one poet that I interviewed years ago, and he said the first time he heard Coltrane he had to leave the venue,” Anyabwile Love, professor of Black studies at Philadelphia Community College, told WHYY. “It was a live performance, and he said he sat there and watched Coltrane reconstruct the universe. He had to go outside to get some air.”

Love is among the people helping put on the weeklong Ars Nova Workshop “Coltrane 100” celebration. Ars Nova Workshop will continue putting on Coltrane-themed events every month for the next year to celebrate the artist. The Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Mann Center, and LOVE Park are also holding events celebrating Coltrane’s legacy. 

Coltrane’s impact on the city is still felt today. His home in the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood is currently being restored, with ownership reverting to his extended family. His home was already designated a National Historic Landmark in 1999.

“We are all on board with the mission of opening the house to the public and having it there in the community as something symbolic of what John Coltrane was able to do there, which is to be a beacon for the highest possibilities of creative achievement,” his son, saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, said of the restoration.

Personally, I think it’s cool that all these years later, the city of Philadelphia still celebrates Coltrane as one of their own. 

“John Coltrane, as someone who was a Philadelphian, reminds us that great things come out of Philadelphia-gritty things — real things,” Veasley said.

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John Coltrane’s Philadelphia Home To Be Restored