Meditations (John Coltrane album)

Meditations
Studio album by
ReleasedAugust 1966
RecordedNovember 23, 1965
StudioVan Gelder (Englewood Cliffs)
GenreFree jazz, avant-garde jazz
Length40:31
LabelImpulse!
A-9110
ProducerBob Thiele
John Coltrane chronology
The Avant-Garde
(1966)
Meditations
(1966)
Live at the Village Vanguard Again!
(1966)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic
DownBeat (Don DeMichael) / (William Russo)
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music
The Penguin Guide to Jazz
The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide

Meditations is a 1966 album by John Coltrane. The album was considered the "spiritual follow-up to A Love Supreme." It features Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders as soloists, both playing tenor saxophones. This was the last Coltrane recording to feature his classic quartet lineup of himself, bassist Jimmy Garrison, drummer Elvin Jones and pianist McCoy Tyner (augmented here as a sextet with Sanders and second drummer Rashied Ali), as both Jones and Tyner would quit the band by early 1966. Sanders, Ali, Garrison and Coltrane's wife Alice would comprise his next group.

Alternative versions of tracks 2–5 had been recorded in September 1965 by the same musicians minus Rashied Ali and Sanders. They were later issued as First Meditations (for quartet) in 1977.