The Church of John Coltrane

For over 60 years, a diverse crowd has gathered weekly in San Francisco to listen to the music of John Coltrane. But this isn’t a jazz club or a study group, but a Christian church - The St. John Will-I-Am Coltrane African Orthodox Church - where the late saxophonist is venerated as a saint.

In 1965, whilst out celebrating their first wedding anniversary, Franzo and Marina King heard John Coltrane play and found it - literally - a religious experience. Describing it as a "sound baptism", they were inspired to set up a church in San Francisco dedicated to the saxophonist, which still runs today.

On the 100th anniversary of Coltrane's birth, writer and Coltrane fan Ben Cottam heads to San Francisco to join the church’s Sunday service and see if he can truly become ‘Coltrane conscious’. He meets worshippers for whom A Love Supreme isn’t just a great jazz album but a religious text.

The Black Panthers and ‘flower power’ hippie groups, with whom the Church shared the streets when performing their outreach work and running their soup kitchen, are long gone. But despite their age, Archbishop Franzo and Supreme Mother Marina are still preaching, leading worshippers through a jazz liturgy.

But as gentrification and the AI boom send property values soaring, the Church has found it impossible to find a permanent home. Can it survive in the decades to come?

Producer: Clare Walker