Celebrate Coltrane's 88th with just-unearthed recording at Temple U.

GIGANTIC dinosaur bones aren't the only things being dug up by Philadelphia archaeologists. A late-life recording by Philly-based saxophonist John Coltrane was recently discovered in the archives at Temple University by scholar Yasuhiro Fujioka, then dusted off for much-belated release by Resonance Records.

And tomorrow at 5:30 p.m., on what would have been Coltrane's 88th birthday, the album will be debuted and discussed in a free-admission gab session at Temple's Paley Library, 1210 Polett Walk, sponsored by Ars Nova Workshop.

Recorded for radio replay by then-student-run WRTI-FM, the tape captures a campus concert by Coltrane at Mitten Hall on Nov. 11, 1966, nine months before his untimely death at age 40 (attributed to liver cancer, though hepatitis and heroin addiction played roles).

The Student Union put on the show; tickets went for $2.50. Three members of the jazz master's working quartet made the date: wife Alice Coltrane on piano, Pharoah Sanders on saxophones and flute, and Rashied Ali (likewise Philadelphia-based) on drums.

Coltrane's regular bassist, Jimmy Garrison, was otherwise occupied, so another Philly local, Sonny Johnson, subbed. And Coltrane's Strawberry Mansion jam-session buddies - Steve Knoblauch and Arnold Joyner on alto sax, Umar Ali, Algie DeWitt and Robert Kenyatta on percussion - also jumped in.

If you're expecting renderings of "Naima" and "My Favorite Things," think again.

Yeah, Coltrane's mellow, mainstream '60s stuff is what people remember and still hear played, kind of the way we live anew with the youthful work of Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra. But in his late period, Coltrane was a listener-challenging advocate for modal-shifting, spirit-invoking "free jazz," literally making up the music as he went along, and demanding the same from his group.

The newly minted Coltrane album "Offering: Live at Temple University" will be played at tomorrow's meet-up. And two notables in attendance at the concert - jazz critic Francis Davis, then a Temple undergraduate, and saxophonist Carl Grubbs, a relative of Coltrane's first wife, Naima - will tug on their memories.

Jazz historian John Szwed and WRTI show host J. Michael Harrison are also participating. For details and an aural snippet, go to arsnovaworkshop.com.