The tunes from this are from Coltrane's last two recording session recorded shortly before he died in 1967.
	Carl Sagan's crew at Jet Propulsion Laboratories compiled an album that was attached to the Voyager space probes which would represent the best musical utterances of all of humanity, because the Voyagers were going to be the first man-made objects to leave the solar system. I've always felt that Ogunde from this album should have been one of the recordings that was included.
	It is a short performance, less than 5 minutes. I feel when I listen to this that Coltrane was trying to sum up his entire life in this one short performance. His sound is incredibly large and lyrical and centered, with a huge vibrato. Soloing, he shows his incredible mastery of harmony and rhythm, floating away from the theme and then returning to it twice. He ends the piece with a seemingly endless flow of fast pitches that he breathes at a whisper. No one has shown this kind of mastery of the tenor saxophone in the 33 years since Trane's passing.
	Offering and Expression both share a similar kind of plan. They both start with lyrical, out of tempo melodies, that Coltrane varies very freely. The drummer, Rashied Ali, rolls lightly in accompaniment and Alice Coltrane plays arpregiated harp-like piano. After several repetitions of the main themes, Ali swells up like a storm and Coltrane turns to duel with him. Coltrane plays circular roll-like figures in the middle of his horn that sound like he's imitating Ali's drum figures. He constantly breaks free of these loops and screams high or drops low on his horn, sometimes seeming to play in the high, low and medium registers all within the same beat. At the end of each duel, Alice and Jimmy Garrison re-enter and Coltrane returns to the main theme of the pieces, each time like the sun breaking through storm clouds and shining like glory.
	The fourth piece on the album, "To Be" is one of the few performances where Coltrane is recorded playing flute. I've heard that he was playing a flute that he inherited from his friend Eric Dolphy for this. His young friend, Pharoah Sanders, accompanies on flute. The piece maintains a single slow mysterious mood for all of its 15 minute length. I don't usually listen this much, since it's not as substantial a piece of music as Ogunde, Offering and Expression.