Fascinating, well-written piece. Thanks for sharing! I plan to revisit it more closely when I free up (probably while listening to A Love Supreme -- arguably the greatest jazz album of all time).
A Love Supreme is a wonderful album, but Ascension and his later avant-garde work marked a new direction in jazz. Listening to Coltrane play his later work, feels to me like he had unshackled himself from the past, from the changes, and was his most pure expression of self.