Photographs show Coltrane being given this saxophone by Yamaha in his dressing room before his concert in Shizuoka on July 22, 1966. Yamaha were based in the Shizuoka Prefecture and, having only recently branched out from making pianos and organs, they had begun production of woodwind instruments only the year before this concert, in 1965. Yamaha were keen to secure endorsements from big names, and enlisted Ennosuke Saito, a music promoter and interpreter who traveled with Coltrane for the Japan tour, to secure sponsorships from Sonny Rollins, Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane. Coltrane chose this prototype saxophone and gave the Yamaha representatives input about how they might improve the instruments, apparently including that the D key was rather low. Saito recalls being impressed that Coltrane did not seek compensation for endorsing their saxophones but seemed delighted to sample the new models. Yamaha also gifted a similar prototype model to Coltrane's band mate Pharoah Sanders. Coltrane clearly enjoyed playing the instrument because, despite having moved away from an alto saxophone and playing a tenor sax almost exclusively since the early 1950s, Coltrane played this alto sax that night on stage in Shizuoka as well as the next two dates in Tokyo on July 22 and Nagoya on July 23. He then took the saxophone back home to the U.S.A. with him where he continued to play it, including reportedly at the Jazz Workshop, San Francisco, August, 1966 and at the Village Theatre, December 26, 1966. Photographs show that Coltrane kept this sax in his New York home studio up until his death.

Although most well known for using a tenor or a soprano saxophone, Coltrane's first saxophone at the age of 16 was a used alto saxophone which he continued to play in his early years. He played alto with Dizzy Gillespie's big band before switching almost exclusively to tenor saxophone from 1950 onwards when he played with Gillespie's sextet. Coltrane continued to record and perform on tenor saxophone, with the exception of his album My Favourite Things, released in 1961, on which he played soprano. At the onset of the 1960s, Coltrane began to experiment more freely with other instruments, learning to play the flute and the koto while in Japan and even mastering Mozart on the violin. Amid all this experimentation and more avant garde musicianship, Coltrane returned to his first instrument, the alto sax.

This is one of only two Coltrane saxophones sold by his family to benefit The John Coltrane Foundation in 2005. The other sax sold at that time was a soprano saxophone, the buyer is unknown. The Coltrane Family donated one of his tenor saxophones to the Smithsonian in 2014 and it is believed the family still owns his other tenor and a soprano saxophone.

Christie's would like to thank Yasuhiro Fujioka of Coltrane House, Osaka, for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.