This is from Coltranes last session meant to be released. We just recorded it with the Saxophone Summit on our latest release, Seraphic Light. Its a continuous melodic flow. When youre playing that theme over and over, alone on the saxophone, implying some of the harmonies and roots, its like the most beautiful prayer.
I dont think Coltrane ever explored this tune much in concert. This date was near the end of his life, and he might have brought it in for the first time at the recording session for the whole group. Now, of course, he and Alice might have been playing it as a duet, which I would love to have heard. Alice came into the band after McCoy and played with a harp-like approach, playing the full piano in her accompaniment, which seemed to relax Coltranehe played off of more of the spectrum in the harmonies. He was playing a harp-like approach also at that point. They always talk about sheets of sound. When you slow that down, it becomes very harp-like, very open. Now, on the duets, Interstellar Space, which was done in the same month or week of 1967, he was playing through things very quick, with flurries of notes throughout the harmony, whereas he stretched them out a little bit on Expression. I think we would have heard another side to Coltrane had he lived and been able to develop during the ensuing years.
"Expression" was one of the songs that inspired me to find a way to play through harmonies in a free-flowing manner, without a quarter-note or metronome-type beatan open beat, but still moving through a sequence of chords. I learned a lot about trying to approach improvising with that aspect of meter. Im scratching the surface on that now.