Saxophonist Azar Lawrence came of age inside John Coltrane’s direct musical lineage. In his late teens and twenties he held chairs with Elvin Jones and then McCoy Tyner — Coltrane’s own legendary drummer and pianist — appearing on landmark albums like Enlightenment and Atlantis, and recording with Miles Davis on Dark Magus. That apprenticeship shaped a sound built on Coltrane’s harmonic language and spiritual reach, but Lawrence never stayed a copyist: over five decades he’s carried that foundation into his own catalog, from 1974’s Bridge Into the New Age through Elementals, developing a broad, gritty tone and an improvisational logic that’s distinctly his own. The Los Angeles-born Lawrence, has never been confined by conventional genre categories, though: His instrumental and songwriting work with iconic soul artists Chuck Jackson, Roberta Flack, Marvin Gaye, Phyllis Hyman; and the Earth, Wind & Fire is just as indelible.

“Culminating Coltrane” closes out the centennial year of Coltrane’s birth with Lawrence returning to the source — the music of his mentor’s mentors — filtered through everything he’s learned in the fifty years since. It’s a rare chance to hear that lineage carried forward by someone who lived it.