SFJAZZ Ravi Coltrane “Coltrane Centennial Celebration”

Just days before John Coltrane would have turned 100 his oldest surviving son, saxophonist

Ravi Coltrane, presents a blazing young band to mark the milestone. While Ravi spent the first quarter century of his career focusing on acquiring a diverse array of experience as a sideman and then honing his own lustrous, harmonically ambiguous compositions, he’s taken up the family mantle in recent years. With a variety of ensembles, projects and initiatives on and off the bandstand, he’s championed the legacy of his parents (including with his 2025 stint as an SFJAZZ Resident Artistic Director).

For this celebration he performs with trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, a longtime collaborator who graduated from Berkeley High and spent years touring and recording with alto sax great and MBASE conceptualist Steve Coleman. A teenage prodigy, Israeli pianist/keyboardist Gadi Lehavi made his Village Vanguard debut with Ravi at 15. Now 30, he’s more than lived up to his enormous potential, playing with consummate technique and capacious imagination. Powering the quartet is Bay Area-reared drum sensation Elé Howell, 28, a supremely musical accompanist who gained national attention when Coltrane started hiring him in 2021 for various projects, including Cosmic Music: Revisiting the Music of John and Alice Coltrane. Though John Coltrane ascended in 1967 at the age of 40, his presence continues to illuminate new directors for exploration.