John Coltrane
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, 1963 via Reuters.
One of the best jobs I ever held was assistant manager at Grace Records. I was a founding staff member at the new and used vinyl shop in Arizona, a father and son venture that was a thrill to work at.
Photo of John Coltrane via Reuters. Photo credit: Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy.
Did you know jazz musician John Coltrane was canonized by the African Orthodox Church in 1982? Coltrane was canonized at the behest of a religious community in San Francisco which founded a church in his name, and St. John Coltrane Church is still alive and well today.
Image via Kimberly Winston / RNS
The altar is set with a drum kit, a keyboard, a saxophone, and, most importantly, a much-loved vinyl rendering of a jazz classic, complete with liner notes. When this church and its 70 members are forced to leave their storefront location at the end of next month, they will pack those instruments as lovingly as they will the shiny brass tabernacle that holds the Eucharist, the brass cross, and the scarlet and gold icons that grace all the walls.
Editor's Note: Earlier this week, our intrepid blogger/reporter/resident-God-Nerd Christian Piatt sat down with the makers of the highly-anticipated film Blue Like Jazz — Donald Miller, director Steve Taylor and Marshall Allman, the actor who portrays protagonist "Don" in the screen adaptation of Miller's best-selling memoir — to talk about faith, film and ... fate.
Blue Like Jazz premiered at the SXSW Festival in Texas earlier this month and opens nationwide April 13. Piatt caught up with the filmmakers in a Colorado Springs theater where they were hosting a sneak-peek screening and persuaded the gents to unpack the story of the-little-film-that-could and the Spirit that buoyed them along the way.
The wide-ranging interview covers everything from John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" and what Miller calls "dangerous theological ideas" to the astounding grace of God and peanut butter cups. Fascinating and funny, the conversation with the hearts and minds behind Blue Like Jazz is a humdinger.
Watch the interview in its entirety and read Piatt's reflections on the film and his conversation with its makers inside the blog ...