John Coltrane could speak volumes with a sophisticated sax riff—but it’s his words that take center stage in the first trailer for Chasing Trane, premiering exclusively on VanityFair.com. The documentary, written and directed by John Scheinfeld, explores Coltrane’s incredible life and career with the help of commentary from celebrity fans, including Bill Clinton, Common, Carlos Santana, and Sonny Rollins, not to mention Denzel Washington, on hand to read writings by Coltrane himself. (As Variety explains, the famed jazz artist, who died of liver cancer at the age of 40, did just a smattering of radio interviews in his lifetime and was never interviewed on television—which is why Scheinfeld needed to find an actor to read Coltrane’s words in the first place. Enter Washington, flexing some of the same muscles he first exercised in Spike Lee’s fictionalized 1990 jazz drama Mo’ Better Blues.)

The film, which already made a splash on the festival circuit, is being released in theaters by Abramorama starting April 14th in New York at the IFC Center.