This performance of John Coltrane's music was held at London's Cafe OTO as a memorial gig to mark the 50th anniversary of the musician's death (aged 40) in 1967. Hosted by UK tenor saxophonist Paul Dunmall, who assembled his Sun Ship Quartet especially for the occasion, he was joined by several guest players from Europe. The most prominent of these was veteran tenor sax player Alan Skidmore, who witnessed Coltrane playing live on his only visit to the UK in 1961. The set begins with Coltrane's voice reciting ‘May There Be Peace And Love And Perfection Throughout All Creation O God’, the introduction to a flute and percussion piece that acts as a meditational opener for the rest of the concert, with Julie Kjær's flute-playing flickering in the centre of the percussive circle that Ståle Liavik Solberg and Mark Wastell are constructing around her. The rest of the evening is made up of the Dunmall group's rendition of the five compositions that form Coltrane's 1971 album Sun Ship. “Strap yourselves in,” he advises the audience in his introduction, and he wasn't kidding. The force on some of the playing here, especially when Skidmore adds his tenor blasts to the inferno, is fire music at its most incendiary. Tempered with beautifully played passages of spiritual reflection, Skidmore and the Sun Ship ensemble's creative homage to Coltrane is wholly sincere and deeply touching. It ends with an explosive rendition of ‘Ascension’, where all concerned come together in a final attempt to blow the roof off the venue. That they almost succeed is a true testimony to the purpose and validity of the project.