Coltrane Home Named A 'National Treasure'
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The house in Dix Hills where jazz great John Coltrane lived when he wrote ‘A Love Supreme,’ is being restored by Friends of the Coltrane Home as an education center. Photo by Ellen Druda
By Sophia Ricco
sricco@longislandergroup.com
The John and Alice Coltrane Home in Dix Hills was designated a “National Treasure” by the National Trust in recognition of ongoing restoration efforts and the outreach of Coltrane’s legacy to local schools.
After being placed on the National Trust’s list of the 11 Most Endangered Cultural Sites in the U.S. back in 2011, the Friends of the Coltrane Home received an outpouring of support that allowed them to further their goals for the home and education programs.
“We’re incredibly excited to have got this designation,” Ron Stein, president of Friends of the Coltrane Home, said. “It speaks to how incredibly important this site is and how fortunate we are to have such an amazing cultural gem right here on Long Island.”
The house, in a residential area of Dix Hills, is where jazz great John Coltrane lived with his family when he wrote and recorded “A Love Supreme,” considered by many to be one of the greatest jazz albums ever made.
The National Trust has their own system they use to determine if a house will become a “National Treasure.” The Trust will now work closely with the Friends to aid them in securing grants. With their help, the organization received a $75,000 grant from the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.
“From our perspective, it seemed to us that we needed to demonstrate that we were an organization that could get things done,” Stein said. “That the project we were undertaking was of significant enough importance and that we had made significant enough headway in moving the project forward that it justified a tremendous investment of time and energy by the National Trust.”
Michelle Coltrane, daughter of John and Alice Coltrane and Friends of the Coltrane Home board member Kathleen Hennessy.
Around 200 people gathered on the lawn of the home Oct. 9 for the ceremony. Attendees were invited inside to see the progress made so far. At Lincoln Center, guitarist, Derek Trucks and jazz musician, McCoy Tyner were inducted onto the Friends’ honorary board.
“It was wonderful to hear Derek Trucks talk about how enormous an influence John Coltrane was on him… McCoy was in tears about getting the award, which was a beautiful thing,” Stein said.
This was followed by a listening panel of recently discovered “lost recordings” by Coltrane.
“When you listen to Coltrane’s music, you cannot help but be transformed and experience a certain transcendence in his music,” Stein said. “It’s so powerful, so uplifting, so filled with intensity and commitment.”
His music influenced artists like, The Grateful Dead, Eric Clapton, U2, Carlos Santana and Kendrick Lamar.
“That’s the power and the importance of this site is the fact that music that was created 50 plus years ago had and continues to have such profound influence on contemporary artists today,” Stein said.
The home will continue to share the Coltranes’ influence through their emergent music education program that will be brought first to the Hempstead and Wyandanch school district.
“The focus is really to learn the basic life skills through music: listening, collaborating, being creative,” Stein said. “Those are skills that are not just important to music but to their moving ahead in life with positive attitudes.”
In the next year, the Friends group hopes to have enough money raised to bring the curriculum to younger children, with five trained facilitators prepared.
“A big goal of this home is to empower and educate young people,” Stein said. “To foster courage and creativity, particularly in girls and young women, using Alice Coltrane as a model. She is someone who was able to push forward and rise up even in a misogynistic world of jazz.”
Derek Trucks was inducted as an Honorary Board member. The guitar great cites strong influence from Coltrane in his own music.
The name was recently changed to the John and Alice Coltrane Home, to demonstrate that the two were equal partners in their marriage and music. Not only did John compose “A Love Supreme” in the upstairs of the house, but Alice recorded her first five studio albums in the basement recording studio.
“We see that girls in the music environment tend to be much less willingly to step forward and try to improvise and make their voices heard,” Stein said. “So we want to make sure that we lift the voices of the girls so that we can encourage them to take those risks and develop that confidence.”
Before her passing in 2017, Alice Coltrane participated in a visioning session for the Coltrane Home. Her mission was to spread a message of kindness and compassion, by understanding one’s responsibility to give back.
“She directed us very clearly,” Stein said. “She said, ‘It’s just a house. If you’re going to make this project really successful, then you have use the house as a base and work outward to the rest of the community.’”
Even so, the organization has progressed in restoring the house to reflect the period when the Coltranes lived there in the 1960s. They plan to use old photographs to create a “snapshot in time” of the meditation room, basement recording studio, and upstairs where John composed his famous album.
“Every ounce of the album is infused with an amazing spirituality,” Stein said. “Whether you like jazz or don’t like jazz, regardless of what you listen to, you hear ‘A Love Supreme’ and realize it’s something all together different, than anything you’ve ever heard before.”
