I Played With the Saint John Coltrane Church in San Francisco
On a musically and spiritually powerful Sunday, I became more than a musician
Dear Readers and Music Lovers,
A long time ago, but not too long ago, I moved to a city along the Pacific. A place once called the Barbary Coast. It was San Francisco in 1994. I was broke and young and hungry for everything. In my first few months in the City by the Bay, I explored everywhere I could.
One Sunday, I went to the Saint John Coltrane Church. It was a real place that sounded made up. But, trust me, it was real, and they celebrated and worshiped by playing the music of jazz legend John Coltrane.
The church still exists, but it’s moved. I’m not going to tell you where it is because it’s worth trying to find it on your own. If you do find it, maybe you’ll have an experience like I did.
Scroll past my fingers playing the keys to read about the first time I discovered the Saint John Coltrane Church…
Grove Street was quiet in San Francisco’s Western Addition. The booming bass and smooth rhymes of Snoop Dogg coming from the projects half a block from my house had quieted a few hours before. The fog was nearly burned off as I walked up the hill toward Alamo Square Park in the late Sunday morning calm. I was headed to the Saint John Coltrane Church.
I’d heard it was an actual place of worship, and they worshiped by playing jazz. The city had only been my home for a few months, so I hadn’t been to the church yet, but I was a fan of the late, great saxophone maestro, John Coltrane.
I was a twenty-one-year-old musician and classically trained pianist, and Coltrane was one of my musical heroes, along with other jazz titans, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, and Duke Ellington. Despite my love for the music, I was timid about my jazz skills, so I didn’t plan to play.
I moved up the steep hill and walked across Fillmore Street. I passed a series of Victorian houses straight from tourist postcards, and then I entered the park. It was a beautiful spring morning under the eucalyptus trees, and I noticed a photo shoot taking place. I decided to stop, sit down on a bench, and watch.
A photographer was circling three ballerinas in intentionally torn and deliberately sexy pink tutus wearing clown makeup on their faces. The colorfully costumed models were playing Twister while photos were being snapped. The photographer was encouraging their lithe and alluring bodies to become more and more entangled on the Twister mat.
The Coltrane Church opened its doors at noon, and since musicians were usually late, I figured a jazz church would be no different. So, I sat there in the sun, my short-sleeve, button-up shirt open, enjoying the entertainment and grinning gleefully. I was a clandestine voyeur…or so I thought.
When one of the ballerinas peered upside-down between her legs at me and called out, “Hey, pretty boy! Wanna join us?” I didn’t think she meant me.
“Yeah, you!” she called again with muslin frills in the air and her pigtails dangling. “Come on and join us!”
The two other ballerinas giggled, and the photographer beckoned with a free hand for me to come over.
Before I realized what I was doing, I was bashfully skirting off through the park like an embarrassed squirrel. I quickly made my way down a hill across Scott Street to Divisadero. The entire time, I wondered what wonderfully wicked opportunity I had missed out on.
I scolded myself all the way down the busy street until I got to the front door of the church. It was a plain building with curtains covering the windows and a sign above the front door in Old English font that read St. John’s African Orthodox Church. A metal gate was open to an alcove, so I walked forward until I could hear rumbling from behind a wooden door.
After I walked through that door, all my regrets about leaving the ballerinas behind quickly disappeared.
I went inside and through a thick velvet curtain, then I emerged into a twenty-foot by forty-foot room. It was packed with people standing and sitting on six rows of hard, wood pews. The room was hot, humid, thick with breath and bodies, and filled with the sounds of symphonic jazz cacophony.
People of all races and genders were there. Wearing fedoras, dashikis, oversized jerseys, and fuchsia-green dresses. Church ladies, hipsters, cholos, queens, and young white boys like me, sandwiched between dapper black men in double-breasted suits, dangerously curvy Latinas, and nerdy guys in bowling shirts. All playing instruments of different types.
Six different saxophonists with baritones, altos, and sopranos were blowing. Five percussionists with timbales, congas, and bongos in the front row were beating out rhythms. A trumpeter and trombonist were locked in musical lines in one pew while other musicians shook tambourines or played flutes in others.
At the front of the church, on a one-foot-high stage, a drummer, an upright bassist, and a B3 organist held down the beat and back end for the entire symphony.
In front of the trio on the stage, a tall, dark-skinned man wearing a regal purple robe that reached the floor faced us. He was the band leader, the conductor, and the archbishop, perspiring profusely while he blew the roof off with his alto sax. His eyes were closed, and he was soloing over the massive wall of sound.
Everyone was playing Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. Everyone but me.
I made my way into one of the back pews and looked around. There were no windows, but the walls were lined with five-foot-tall, Baroque-styled pieces of brightly colored, iconographic paintings. Nearly all of the artwork was John Coltrane with a gold leaf halo around his head and a sax in his hands.
To the left of the low stage that served as a musical pulpit, and under one of the paintings, there was an upright piano. No one was on it. The bench was empty, and it called to me.
The music turned a corner from A Love Supreme, slowed down, got slightly mournful, and then the upright bassist began a repetitive line. A thumping mantra. I recognized the song. It was Africa being played in A minor.
I went over and sat down in front of the piano. I played nothing at first. I just kept listening.
Horns began to enter the song and quickly started to wail. People started whooping, banging on the pews like drums, and swaying or dancing where they stood. On the stage, the archbishop took in a breath and let it go into his sax, releasing lines upon lines of gritty, gorgeous melodies.
I knew it was time for me to play.
I started with quiet and gentle responses to the archbishop’s sax using simple chord clusters. First in the center of the keyboard then building to higher registers. Taking more chances as I played. Developing my minimalist chord structures around the massive orchestra of noise and texture that filled the room.
It was hot and thick in there, like a jungle or bayou. My hands struck the piano hard in the humidity, my head bent down, and my body arched over the keys. A drop of sweat fell off my face and landed on middle C. Then more sweat dropped off me. The keys became wet, and I used their wetness to slide my fingers over their slick surface.
A powerful spirit of music took over. I rose up over myself and saw myself playing at the same time, completely inhabiting the piano. I was inside the instrument, dancing with the hammers as they struck the strings. Grooving and moving and shaking and rattling with the room.
That’s when the archbishop looked my way.
He caught my eye, winked, and smiled. Then he called something I couldn’t hear over the musical fray, but I could tell he was conducting me. I lip-read the words, “Go! Go! Go!”
He wanted me to solo. And I did. I let it fly like a comet streaking across a Coltrane-created cosmos.
Digging in, I pounded my left hand and drummed up rhythms, swaying in time on the bench, hunched over the keys, and going for it. I used my right hand to create harmonic minor runs as if I were rolling down the River Nile, constructing phrases and stories with my fingers. Then, I found the flatted fifth over and over. The tritone. The devil’s chord. And it became angelic. Lifting me up in the saintly music of John Coltrane.
“Yeah! Yeah, man!” I heard someone cry out.
I kept at it, running my fingers over the ivories with melody lines, until I knew I needed to trail off and let another player take over. In my place, a burning trumpet took over my musical space, and the organ played a game of call-and-response with them.
Minutes became months became millennia. I was carried into a calm sea of sound. Surrounded by music and the community of making it with others. No spotlights and no audience. Just us playing for us in that tiny church room.
The only time we stopped playing was when the archbishop brought us all down and conducted us into silence. He spoke from the stage. A sermon and a poem interlaced. His voice commanding and gentle at the same time. I don’t recall the exact words but he spoke in a non-denominational way about the mystical, spiritual quality of Coltrane’s music.
Then, a beautiful woman with skin like a moonless night sky took the stage, and the archbishop stepped aside. She began singing with the onstage trio. In the pews, I saw some musicians with tears. Their watery eyes were joyfully listening to the tune.
Calmly standing at the edge of the stage while the woman sang, the archbishop looked my way and waved me over. I got off the piano bench and went toward him. When I did, he stepped off the stage, opened a heavy curtain next to him, and invited me behind it. I slipped behind the curtain with him into the shadows.
In the tiny space, he looked at me with warm eyes, smiled with a mouth of huge teeth, and said, “You’re one of us now.”
Then, he embraced me deeply.
The hug lasted long enough for the music to change, and I heard the opening lines of a new song. A new pianist was playing and I heard the opening chords to Equinox.
When our embrace ended, the archbishop held me by both shoulders and said, “Come again anytime and play. Anytime.”
I was deeply honored but couldn’t find any words except “Thank you. I will.”
We went back into the room, and the archbishop returned to the stage.
Instead of returning to the pews, I slipped out through the door I came in. Even though I knew the music would go on until almost dusk, they had a new piano player now.
I’d been at the church for two hours, and it was time for me to go. I rolled out into the San Francisco afternoon. Into the bustle of the city on a Sunday.
As I walked back up the hill through Alamo Square, my fingers were raw, and my ears were buzzing. The ballerinas were gone, but I could still hear the echo of their giggling. Their delicious laughter was mixed with the memory of a burning and beautiful John Coltrane symphony now.
That day and the music we played abides. It’s more than a memory; it’s a feeling. A feeling of inclusion. A feeling of getting lost and being found. A feeling that was saintly and sinful and everything in between.
This story was originally published by The Memoirist on July 24, 2024. Thanks so much to editor Cindy Heath for helping to polish my piece.
Go to GentryBronson.com to find out more about my music, writing, and work with my creative and media agency clients.