"[4][5] Coltrane had provided financial support for the center while it was being built, and would continue to write checks to help cover its operating expenses.

"[1] The performance space was "a 30x100 foot loftlike room on the second floor, backdropped by colorful wall posters depicting an African village scene.

He also divided the balance of what was left ($500) after paying each musician the union scale for each concert as was agreed upon with the Center.

"[5] Years after the concert, drummer Rashied Ali recalled: "[with] all the energy of 125th Street going on right outside the window... with incense burning and the place packed, he did something I had never seen him do before — he sat down on the bandstand.

Without a great amount of amplification, you can't make music as violent, scraping, tinnily climactic as this recording suggests.

This explains some of the extra boost in Coltrane's soprano saxophone solo in 'My Favorite Things,' and suggests how shattering Pharoah Sanders’s performance in the same song might have been, though the sound is too distorted for one to know.

"[14] In his AllMusic review, Sam Samuelson called The Olatunji Concert "a rich and telling recording", stating that it "demonstrates [Coltrane's] sonic blast free jazz direction that was becoming more aggressive and out of bounds; It portrays what could have been one of the most dynamically stellar groups of the mid-1960s avant jazz scene."

It's the demanding sound of a man faced with impending death, yet unafraid to carry forward and remain steadfast to his intense, singular vision of music as a universal bridge.

For the unprepared listener, it might all be too much-- not only because of the sheer intensity of noise levels or dissonance, but because this is the sound of a man who knows every breath he draws inches him one step closer to the grave.

The Last Live Recording is a deliriously scattered mess of joy and pain, intermingled and bound up within Coltrane's unbridled and luminescent energy.

And now it stands as his parting gesture: one last moment bursting out at the seams with elation and ferocity, an awe-inspiring testament to life.

"[19] In a BBC review, Peter Marsh wrote: "there's an intention to Coltrane's playing here which transcends much of the macho free jazz posturing of lesser players who followed in his wake.

It's full of sound and fury alright, but it's signifying something... [U]ntil the invention of a time machine this is the closest we're going to get to being there.