Please join Ars Nova Workshop for a candid conversation about the responsibilities—and complexities—of caring for a major musical legacy. Kathleen Hennessy, Matthew Garrison, and archivist Steven Fullwood of Nomadic Archivists Project come together to consider what it means to inherit, preserve, protect, and share the work and histories of transformative artists.

Moving beyond conventional discussions of John Coltrane’s musical legacy, the conversation will explore the actual work of stewardship: archives and recordings, intellectual property and historic sites, scholarship and public memory, and the deeply personal questions that arise when a family’s history also belongs to a much larger cultural history. Who cares for these materials? Who gets to tell these stories? And how can archives remain living resources—capable of generating new knowledge, creativity, and connection—rather than simply repositories of the past?

Kathleen Hennessy is Vice President of The John & Alice Coltrane Home and leads Coltrane Legacy projects including Year of Alice and the Alice Coltrane Oral History. She also leads the working group for the John Coltrane House in Philadelphia, advancing the preservation and celebration of the Coltranes’ artistic and cultural legacies.

Matthew Garrison, son of legendary bassist and longtime John Coltrane collaborator Jimmy Garrison, brings the perspective of an acclaimed musician and artist stewarding a profound family and musical inheritance. Steven Fullwood, co-founder of Nomadic Archivists Project, brings decades of experience documenting, preserving, and activating Black cultural memory.

Presented as part of COLTRANE 100, this conversation asks us to consider legacy not as something fixed or inherited passively, but as an ongoing practice of care, responsibility, interpretation, and imagination.