World champion chromatic harmonica player Mathias Heise joins the Danish Radio Big Band for a bold reimagining of John Coltrane's 1965 landmark album.
World champion chromatic harmonica player Mathias Heise joins the Danish Radio Big Band for a bold re-imagining of John Coltrane's 1965 landmark album. Rather than presenting a tribute, Heise reconstructs the four-part suite from within, integrating key elements of Coltrane's original improvisations into newly conceived big band arrangements.
At the heart of the project is a unifying harmonic concept built around the double-harmonic minor scale, which shapes the sonic identity of the entire album. Coltrane's iconic opening motif in Acknowledgement is expanded for full saxophone section, and the famous twelve-key cycle becomes a panoramic orchestral movement across the ensemble. In Resolution, Heise transcribes Coltrane's tenor solo in full, distributing it between harmonica and saxophones while building new brass and ensemble frameworks around it.
Throughout the album, original improvised material is preserved, orchestrated and reframed rather than replaced. The Danish Radio Big Band's soloists are given space to assert their own voices, particularly in Pursuance, which builds toward an escalating tenor exchange before resolving into a solo harmonica cadenza - a moment that foregrounds Heise's continued expansion of the chromatic harmonica's expressive range.
The suite concludes with Psalm, re-scored for full big band while retaining Coltrane's melodic contour and phrasing, before flowing directly into Alabama, the 1963 ballad written in response to the Birmingham church bombing. The pairing provides a contemplative and cohesive close, linking spiritual intensity with historical gravity.
With A Love Supreme Revisited, Heise and the Danish Radio Big Band honour Coltrane's architecture while asserting a distinct contemporary voice - expanding the harmonic palette, reinterpreting melodies and improvisations as new orchestrations, and placing the chromatic harmonica at the center of one of jazz's most revered works.
Track Listing
A Love Supreme - Introduction Part 1 - Acknowledgement Interlude #1 Part 2 – Resolution Interlude #2 Part 3 – Pursuance Harmonica Cadenza Part 4 – Psalm
