John Coltrane en motion

BlackStar creates the spaces and resources needed to uplift the work of Black, Brown and Indigenous artists working outside of the confines of genre, prioritizing visionary work that is experimental in its aesthetics, content, and form and builds on the work of elders and ancestors to imagine a new world. We elevate artists who are overlooked, invisibilized or misunderstood and celebrate the wide spectrum of aesthetics, storytelling and experiences that they bring. We bring that work to new audiences as well as place it in dialog with other past and contemporary work. For What Now: 2026, in partnership with ArtPhilly, BlackStar will curate John Coltrane En Motion: Live Rescoring Diasporic Stories of Motion, an immersive film-and-music experience that explores the emotional, cultural, and spiritual pathways of migration through the sonic universe of John Coltrane. By pairing Coltrane’s expansive sound world with two contemporary, feature films: The Queen of My Dreams and Mother of George, the project illuminates diasporic stories of displacement, identity, tradition, and transformation across continents.