RNS reports “St. John Coltrane Church, a 48-year-old institution in this city’s Fillmore District, just south of swankier Pacific Heights,” has agreed to vacate its rented space at the end of April:
Sunday Masses are built on a live performance of “A Love Supreme,” a 33-minute opus that saxophonist Coltrane wrote to express the awesomeness of God.
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Church officials say the landlord stopped accepting their monthly $1,600 rent checks two years ago and attempted eviction last September. That was averted with a petition of 4,000 signatures, way more than the church’s worldwide membership of 700. Now, landlord Floyd Trammell — himself a pastor at another church — has agreed to withdraw eviction proceedings if the church will peacefully vacate by the end of April.
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The Rev. Franzo W. King, the church’s founder, archbishop and sax player, and his wife, Mother Marina King, started the church after attending a Coltrane show in 1965. As Nicholas Baham III recounts it in his book “The Coltrane Church: Apostles of Sound, Agents of Social Justice,” the pair were out for fun, but had a spiritual experience. “They had what they call a ‘sound baptism,’” Baham, a professor of ethnic studies at California State University, East Bay, said in a telephone interview. “They saw the Holy Ghost walk out on stage with John Coltrane and the movement started from there.”
A version of “A Love Supreme” that I grew up with: