A sonic exploration and tonal analysis of contemporary creative music in a myriad of improvisational/composed settings, textures, and expressions.
Welcome to Sound Projections
I'm your host Kofi Natambu. This online magazine features the very best in contemporary creative music in this creative timezone NOW (the one we're living in) as well as that of the historical past. The purpose is to openly explore, examine, investigate, reflect on, studiously critique, and take opulent pleasure in the sonic and aural dimensions of human experience known and identified to us as MUSIC. I'm also interested in critically examining the wide range of ideas and opinions that govern our commodified notions of the production, consumption, marketing, and commercial exchange of organized sound(s) which largely define and thereby (over)determine our present relationships to music in the general political economy and culture.
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Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda
("Turiya") was an American jazz pianist, organist, harpist, composer,
vocalist, and swamini. After establishing herself as a canny bop and
hard bop pianist on the fertile Detroit scene of the late 1950s, she
studied with Bud Powell in Paris during the early '60s. She met saxophonist John Coltrane
in 1963, and they were married two years later. Alice was his primary
musical collaborator during his final period. After his death in 1967,
she issued her solo debut, A Monastic Trio,
for Impulse! in 1968, playing both piano and harp. Coltrane released
seven albums for Impulse! between 1968 and 1972. Among them are Ptah, The El Daoud, Journey in Satchidananda, and the landmark Universal Consciousness and World Galaxy,
employing chamber and orchestral strings from various disciplines in
addition to jazz musicians. In 1972, she abandoned secular life, moved
to California, and studied with Hindu gurus Swami Satchidananda and Sathya Sai Baba.
She established The Vedantic Center in Los Angeles in 1975, and signed
with Warner Bros., releasing three studio albums with the label
including that year's Eternity and the live double album Transfiguration
in 1978. Coltrane changed her name to Turiyasangitananda (nicknamed
Turiya) and was appointed swamini of Sai Anantam Ashram. She only
recorded one more album, 1995's Translinear Light for Verve, produced by son Ravi Coltrane. She died in 2007.
She was born Alice McLeod in Detroit to
Solon and Annie McLeod, the fifth of six children. Her mother was a
pianist and sang in the church choir. Alice began studying piano with a
neighbor at age seven. Two years later, she was playing organ during
services at Mount Olive Baptist church. Her piano and organ playing
inspired the congregation to sponsor her music education at a community
school. McLeod attended Detroit's prestigious Cass Technical High
School, where she studied classical music and played percussion in the
marching band. Thanks to the encouragement of her father and her half
brother, saxophonist-turned-bassist Ernie Farrow, she began studying jazz along with two notable classmates, pianist Hugh Lawson and drummer Earl Williams.
She started leading her own group called the Premiers, performing
gospel, jazz, and rhythm & blues standards; members included
trombonist George Bohanon, bassist Anthony Jackson, and drummer Oliver Jackson. She also got work on the Motor City's vibrant jazz scene with Yusef Lateef, Kenny Burrell, and others.
The reason McLeod stood out, even on a scene that boasted world-class talent such as Barry Harris and Teddy Wilson,
was her playing style. Dense with arpeggios and expansive clustered
chords, her piano playing suggested the harp. She was deeply influenced
by harpist Dorothy Ashby, the first person to employ the instrument in bebop. Ashby's
harp playing not only informed Alice's pianism but influenced her to
take up the harp later on. In 1959, she moved to Paris briefly, where
she studied informally with Bud Powell
and served as intermission pianist at the Blue Note club. While serving
in that capacity, she appeared on French television in the company of Lucky Thompson, Pierre Michelot, and Kenny Clarke. She met jazz singer Kenneth "Poncho" Hagood in Paris. They married, had a daughter (Michelle), and moved to New York in 1960. However, the marriage was short-lived due to Hagood's growing dependency on heroin.
Alice and Michelle returned to Detroit, where Alice continued playing jazz with her own trio and in a duo with vibraphonist Terry Pollard. In 1962 to 1963, she returned to New York as a member of Terry Gibbs' quartet playing vibraphone and piano. (They issued the co-billed 1963 album El Nutto for Mercury.) During that time, she met John Coltrane,
and they connected instantly. The pair began living and traveling
together, and in 1964 they had settled on Long Island. They married in
1965 in Juárez, Mexico, after Coltrane's divorce from first wife, Naima
Grubbs.
By then, Alice had joined John's "New Thing" quintet with drummer Rashied Ali, saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, and bassist Jimmy Garrison, and released Live at the Village Vanguard Again! in 1966 and Concert in Japan
from the same tour. Alice's playing is characterized by rhythmically
fluid arpeggios and a pulsing, sometimes droning modal textural
facility. The set proved controversial with (primarily white, male) jazz
critics, who tended to dislike change. She also played on subsequent
studio sessions released posthumously as Expression and Stellar Regions.
Though Alice had always been a deeply spiritual person, John
introduced her to Eastern philosophy and religions, which became her
life's primary focus shortly thereafter. Before his death, he assisted
her in signing a solo contract with Impulse! After her husband's death
from liver cancer in 1967, Coltrane took a vow of celibacy.
With four young children
to feed, she wasted no time getting back to work. In January 1968,
while preparing to release her debut album for Impulse!, she revisited
the unissued San Francisco sessions and added two tracks recorded by her
own group, "Lord, Help Me to Be" and "The Sun," featuring Garrison and drummer Ben Riley, with Sanders appearing on tenor sax and flute. The set was initially issued by Coltrane Records in September as Cosmic Music. Alice's debut, A Monastic Trio with Riley and Garrison was released in December, less than two months after Cosmic Music appeared -- it was re-released by Impulse! the following year, a few months after Coltrane issued her second album, Huntington Ashram Monastery, another trio offering with Ron Carter on bass and Rashied Ali on drums.
In January 1970, she recorded four compositions in her home studio with Riley, Carter, saxophonist Joe Henderson, and Sanders
playing bass clarinet. The album, titled Ptah, the El Daoud, was
released that September. That same year, she played harp on the sessions
for Laura Nyro's Christmas and the Beads of Sweat. Coltrane also met Swami Satchidananda and began studying with him. His impact on her life was profound. She recorded Journey in Satchidananda in November as a reflection of his inspiration. Released in February 1971 with accompaniment by Sanders, Ali, and alternating bassists Charlie Haden, Cecil McBee and Vishnu Wood, it garnered consistently positive reviews.
That year also found Coltrane playing harp alongside Carter and flutist Hubert Laws on the track "Little Dove" from the Rascals' Peaceful World.
She rediscovered the organ in 1970 while desiring to create a
meditative music whose pulse and phrasing would not be interrupted by
pauses for breath. Between April and June 1971, Coltrane and her sidemen
recorded the sessions that would become Universal Consciousness.
Released in September, it showcased Coltrane performing only on the
harp and Wurlitzer organ. More than this, however, it showcased her
consummate skills as an arranger. She added a string quartet that
included Leroy Jenkins to the proceedings, which she composed and arranged alongside a studio trio that included Garrison on bass, and Jack DeJohnette, Clifford Jarvis, and Ali alternating on drums. Ornette Coleman
provided string transcriptions for three tracks. Coltrane seamlessly
wove together the various strains of her musical thinking that included
modal jazz, gospel hymns, blues, Hindi devotional music, and 20th
century classical sonorities.
She followed with the even more ambitious World Galaxy in May 1972. In addition to a studio sextet that included saxophonist Frank Lowe, bassist Reggie Workman, Riley on drums, Elayne Jones on timpani, and Jenkins as a soloist, she composed and arranged for a 15-piece orchestral string section directed by concertmaster David Sackson.
The album included three original compositions as well as readings of
"My Favorite Things" and "A Love Supreme." Some critics took issue with
her covers, foolishly questioning their worth in jazz terms. Like Universal Consciousness, World Galaxy is now regarded as a classic, full of brave, new musical thinking.
1972 also saw Coltrane
transplant her family to Los Angeles from New York to be closer to her
spiritual teachers and their organizations. The Impulse! release of Infinity
caused Coltrane to endure extreme vitriol from jazz critics. Its
original sessions were recorded at different times. Two tunes --"Living
Space" and "Joy" -- were cut in 1965 with the classic quartet of John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, and Garrison.
Onto these performances she overdubbed strings and tambouras. The 1966
bookend cuts "Peace on Earth" and "Leo" were performed by the New Thing
quintet with Alice on piano, organ, and vibraphone, Ali, Sanders, and percussionist Ray Appleton. In addition to strings, she replaced Garrison's bass parts with newly recorded ones by Charlie Haden,
and added new solos of her own playing. Critics and fans howled their
displeasure, but Coltrane's response was direct in an interview: "Were
you there? Did you hear [John's] commentary and what he had to say?...
We had a conversation about every detail; [John] was showing me how the
piece could include other sounds, blends, tonalities, and resonances
such as strings. He talked about cosmic sounds, higher dimensions,
astral levels and other worlds, and realms of music and sound that I
could feel."
Coltrane issued her final album for Impulse!, Lord of Lords, in 1972; it capped her orchestral trilogy. Produced by Ed Michel, it showcased the artist playing harp, piano, organ, tympani, and vibes, backed by Haden and Riley above a 20-piece string section that she composed for, arranged, and conducted. In 1974, she was a co-billed featured guest on Joe Henderson's seminal album The Elements, and recorded the one-off Illuminations with Devadip Carlos Santana and saxophonist Jules Broussard.
In 1975, Coltrane founded the Vedanta
Center in Los Angeles and signed a recording contract with Warner Bros.
The music she issued for the label revealed a deepening of her spiritual
resolve and the sole desire to create music that reflected it. Eternity,
issued in 1976, offered six tracks, ranging from the harp solo "Wisdom
Eye" to "Om Supreme" for electric piano and six singers. Elsewhere, such
as on "Spiritual Eternal," her trio with Riley and Haden were joined by reeds, winds, brass, and strings. She also delivered a radical re-envisioning of sections from Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.
Later that year, she released Radha-Krsna Nama Sankirtana.
Forgoing jazz altogether, it offered Hindu devotional songs. Three
tracks were chants, with Coltrane's organ and electric piano backing a
vocal chorus, while the other two featured her interpretations
accompanied by tambora or drums. For decades it was the most
misunderstood record in her catalog. 1977's Transcendence
followed suit. Coltrane alternately played harp, organ, and Rhodes
piano as well as tambora. She was accompanied on half the album by a
string quartet and the other half by a large vocal chorus.
Her final date for Warner Bros. was 1978's double-live opus Transfiguration. Recorded in performance at UCLA's Schoenberg Hall in a trio with drummer Roy Haynes and Workman
on bass, it offered Coltrane at full intensity playing piano and
Wurlitzer organ. The track "Prema" included a nine-piece string section
that was overdubbed later in the studio. With the album's release came
Coltrane's retreat from public life. She did appear on Marian McPartland's
syndicated Piano Jazz program in 1981. She also changed her name to
Swami Turiyasangitananda and taught at the Vedantic Center -- and later
the Shanti Anantam Ashram (later renamed Sai Anantam Ashram) on 50 acres
near Malibu, California. She only recorded devotional Sanskrit hymns
(or bhajans) for her congregation. Coltrane self-released a small batch
of cassettes including 1982's Turiya Sings, 1987's Divine Songs, 1990's Infinite Chants, and 1995's Glorious Chants. In 1998, she appeared with her sons Ravi and Oran at a John Coltrane tribute concert at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City and again at Joe's Pub in 2002.
She began recording again in 2000 and eventually issued the stellar Translinear Light on the Verve label in 2004. Produced by Ravi,
it featured Coltrane on piano, organ, and synthesizer, in a host of
playing situations with luminary collaborators that included not only
her sons but also Charlie Haden, Jack DeJohnette, Jeff "Tain" Watts, and James Genus. After the release of Translinear Light, she played some selective dates in Paris in 2005, and a three-date tour in the fall of 2006 with Ravi
in Ann Arbor, New York, and San Francisco. On January 12, 2007,
Coltrane died of respiratory failure at Los Angeles' West Hills Hospital
and Medical Center. Her catalog was selectively remastered and reissued
in the United States and Japan.
In July 2021, Coltrane returned to Impulse! with Kirtan: Turiya Sings. The set reframed her 1982 cassette with a mix that Ravi
had only heard for the first time in 2020; he gave his blessing for its
release. The original marked the only time Coltrane's singing voice had
ever been heard solo on an album, accompanied by synths, organs, and
synthesized strings. The 2021 mix offered only her voice accompanied by
an organ.
Alice Coltrane (1937-2007) Artist Biography by Chris Kelsey
Alice Coltrane
was an uncompromising pianist, composer, and bandleader who spent the
majority of her life seeking spiritually in both music and her private
life. Music ran in Coltrane's family; her older brother was bassist Ernie Farrow, who in the '50s and '60s played in the bands of Barry Harris, Stan Getz, Terry Gibbs, and Yusef Lateef.
Alice McLeod began studying classical music at the
age of seven. She attended Detroit's Cass Technical High School with
pianist Hugh Lawson and drummer Earl Williams. As a young woman she played in church and was a fine bebop pianist in the bands of such local musicians as Lateef and Kenny Burrell. McLeod traveled to Paris in 1959 to study with Bud Powell. She met John Coltrane while touring and recording with Gibbs around 1962-1963; she married the saxophonist in 1965, and joined his band -- replacing McCoy Tyner -- one year later. Alice stayed with John's band until his death in 1967; on his albums Live at the Village Vanguard Again! and Concert in Japan, her playing is characterized by rhythmically ambiguous arpeggios and a pulsing thickness of texture.
Long concerned with spiritual matters, Coltrane
(whose spiritual name was "Turiyasangitananda") founded a center for
Eastern spiritual study called the Vedanta Center in 1975. She began a
long hiatus from public and recorded performance, though her 1981
appearance on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz radio series was released by Jazz Alliance. In 1987, she led a quartet that included her sons Ravi and Oran in a John Coltrane tribute concert at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. Coltrane returned to public performance in 1998 at a Town Hall Concert with Ravi and again at Joe's Pub in Manhattan in 2002.
She began recording again in 2000 and eventually issued the stellar Translinear Light on the Verve label in 2004. Produced by Ravi, it featured Coltrane
on piano, organ, and synthesizer, in a host of playing situations with
luminary collaborators that included not only her sons, but also Charlie Haden, Jack DeJohnette, Jeff "Tain" Watts, and James Genus. After the release of Translinear Light,
she began playing live more frequently, including a date in Paris
shortly after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and a brief tour in fall 2006
with Ravi. Coltrane died on January 12, 2007, of respiratory failure at Los Angeles' West Hills Hospital and Medical Center.
During her long time away from the spotlight, Coltrane
spent her time and effort on her Vedanta Center. By 1983, she had
expanded it to become the 48-acre Sai Anantam Ashram in the Agoura
Hills, outside of Los Angeles -- home to a spiritual community. Though
she was not active in the jazz world, Coltrane
quietly recorded music at the ashram and distributed it to her
community's members on four privately pressed -- but professionally
recorded -- cassette tapes from the mid-'80s to the mid-'90s: Turiya Sings, Divine Songs, Infinite Chants, and Glorious Chants. The cassettes represented the expressive side of Coltrane's
practice, displaying an intensely original sound inspired by the gospel
music from the Detroit churches she grew up in, Indian devotional music
and chants, and of course, improvisation, played on harp, eastern
percussion, synthesizers, organs, and strings (she wrote the
arrangements) accompanied by the Sai Antaram Ashram Singers and membership. They also display Coltrane singing for the first time. Luaka Bop sought out the original masters, assisted by Coltrane's children. Enlisting original engineer Baker Bigsby, the label assembled a compilation from the four tapes. Entitled World Spirituality Classics 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda,
it was released in May of 2017 to commemorate both her 80th birthday
and in remembrance of the tenth anniversary of her death. The package
included a lengthy liner essay by jazz historian Ashley Khan, Mark "Frosty" McNeil's Master's thesis, interviews with family, ashram members, and colleagues, and a remembrance by Surya Botofasina in conversation with Andy Beta.
For more than five decades, the Coltrane name remains at the forefront
of modern music. It is lauded throughout the United States as well as
internationally where it has received great acclaim. The musical
offerings cover an eclectic variety of artistic expressions recorded on ABC Impulse, Warner Bros., and Impulse- Universal. She was born and raised in the religious family of Solon and Anne McLeod
in Detroit, Michigan, once hailed as a major musical capitol. Alice
became interested in music and began her study of the piano at the age
of seven. She consistently and diligently practiced and studied
classical music. Subsequently, she enrolled in a more advanced study of
the music of Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, Stravinsky and Tschaikowsky.
She once said: “Classical music for me, was an extensive, technical
study for many years. At that time, I discovered it to be a truly
profound music with a highly intellectual ambiance. I will always
appreciate it with a kind remembrance and great esteem. Subsequent to
the completion of her studies, she said, “The classical artist must
respectfully recreate the composer's meaning. Although, with jazz music,
you are allowed to develop your own creativity, improvisation and
expression. This greatly inspires me.” She graduated from high school with a scholarship to the Detroit Institute of Technology;
however, her musical achievements began to echo throughout the city, to
the extent that she played in many music halls, choirs and churches,
for various occasions as weddings, funerals, and religious programs. Her
skills and abilities were highly enhanced when she began playing piano
and organ for the gospel choir, and for the junior and senior choirs at
her church. In later years, she would further her musical attributes by
including organ, harp and synthesizer to her accomplishments. After moving to New York in the early sixties, Alice met and married John Coltrane,
the great creator of avant-garde music and genius and master of the
tenor and soprano saxophones. His parents were very spiritual, and
dedicated to service in the church in which his father faithfully
served. John's mother, Mrs. Alice Coltrane, Sr, was a fine singer. He was blessed to have them as his parents.
The innovative, futuristic sounds of the Coltrane musical heritage have
set a new pace for modern music that sounded the unstruck chord
throughout the world. And it resounded in the hearts of many people
creating a legacy that will not soon be forgotten. The vision they
shared became a bright effulgence from the lighthouse of polyphonic,
ethereal, universal sound, bringing clarity and understanding of the
music and enhancing appreciation of it to the people.
Alice Coltrane: The Legacy Of A Pioneering Female Jazz Musician
With a cosmic sense
of vision and a passionate interest in spirituality, Alice Coltrane
left a formidable musical legacy that more than stands on its own
The Coltrane name is familiar to people who know little – or even nothing – of jazz. Saxophonist/composer John Coltrane
was one of the genre’s key figures, and his talismanic name, iconic
reputation, and stellar music has transcended the jazz idiom that bore
him. But what the public at large probably don’t know is there are two
significant Coltranes in the history of jazz. The other was John’s wife,
Alice Coltrane, born on August 27, 1937.
Cosmic music
"Manifestation"
Verve, 1969
Percussion: Ray Appleton Drums: Rashied Ali Bass: Jimmy Garrison Tenor Saxophone: Pharoah Sanders Piano: Alice Coltrane Composer Lyricist: John Coltrane
Alice Coltrane’s career as a solo artist didn’t begin until her
husband’s ended, when he died from cancer, aged 40, on July 17, 1967.
Her first formal release came the following year, with the 1968 album Cosmic Music,
on which she was jointly credited with her late husband and added
overdubbed orchestral arrangements to some of his studio performances.
The album made clear that Alice – a classically-trained pianist
originally from Detroit and who’d been in John’s band between 1965 and
’67 – vowed to carry on her husband’s mission of making music that was
driven by an earnest quest to explore the intersection of human and
divine love.
Her first solo album proper, A Monastic Trio, also released
in 1968 on her husband’s former label, Impulse!, showcased Alice playing
harp as well as piano on a series of songs that melded hypnotic modal
vamps with pronounced blues and gospel
inflections. And, over the course of six other highly-regarded albums
for Impulse!, released between 1968 and 1973, Alice went on sonic
voyages of self-discovery that explored new territory in spiritual jazz.
Bass: Charlie Haden Bells, Tambourine: Majid Shabazz Drums: Rashied Ali
Piano and Harp: Alice Coltrane Composer: Alice Coltrane Producer: Alice Coltrane
Via her inspirational early 70s records such as Journey In Satchidananda (featuring Pharoah Sanders), World Galaxy, and Lord Of Lords,
Alice Coltrane patented a uniquely personal style of spiritual jazz
that was defined by cascading harp glissandi, highly percussive piano
playing, swirling clouds of organ, and lush symphonic orchestral
arrangements. This rich musical tapestry was underpinned and unified by a
cosmic sense of vision and a passionate interest in spirituality and
Eastern religion.
These spiritual concerns would eventually lead Alice to leave the
music business altogether, following a three-album stint at Warner Bros
in the late 70s, to focus on living a devout life in a Californian
Ashram, where she became a spiritual director of its Vedantic Center.
Alice continued to make music during this time – under the name Alice
Coltrane Turiyasangitananda – albeit on a sporadic basis.
Though Alice lived in quiet obscurity for many years, by the late
90s, hip-hop had brought her back into the public eye. Cypress Hill
famously sampled her 1972 track “Galaxy In Olodumare” on their 1993 hit
“I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That,” and, throughout the decade, her music was
also a source of inspiration for The Beatnuts and Sneaker Pimps.
The late 90s saw the release of Astral Meditation: The Music Of Alice Coltrane,
a compilation which drew on her Impulse! tenure. For those unfamiliar
with Alice Coltrane’s work, it represents a fine introduction, though
it’s hard to find now. 2006’s The Impulse! Story is, however, still in print, while for those who prefer their music on vinyl, a rare 1973 double-album compilation, Reflection On Creation And Space (A Five Year View), will reward those who are able to hunt it down.
Harp: Alice Coltrane Bass: Ron Carter Percussion: Ben Riley
Associated Performer, Alto Flute: Pharoah Sanders
Alto Flute: Joe Henderson
Composer Lyricist: Alice Coltrane
A formidable musical legacy
In 2004, Alice was coaxed out of retirement to record a new album for Impulse!, Translinear Light, produced by her saxophone-playing son, Ravi Coltrane. Sadly, it proved to be her last. Three years later, on January 12, 2007, she passed away at the age of 69.
Since then, Alice Coltrane’s music has continued to grow in stature,
with a steady stream of reissues confirming a growing public interest in
her work. The samples have continued, too, with Flying Lotus, in
particular, revealing himself to be a keen disciple by re-using snippets
from her songs for his own records. (Born Steven Ellison, the producer
is Alice Coltrane’s grand-nephew.)
Alice Coltrane’s influence is not just restricted to record
producers. Her music has permeated a new generation of jazz musicians
with spiritual inclinations, including acclaimed US saxophonist Kamasi
Washington and rising UK group Maisha, who both carry her musical DNA.
Stewart Smith takes a look at the astounding back catalogue of Alice Coltrane and finds ten points of entry for the curious
Alice Coltrane is one of the greatest artists of the 20th century,
with a sublime musical vision that encompasses jazz, blues, gospel,
Indian classical, North African music, and European modernism. Although
her achievement is now being recognised, for many years Coltrane was
misunderstood and dismissed by many of jazz’s gatekeepers. Some viewed
her in the way many view Yoko Ono: responsible for the break-up of her
husband John Coltrane’s classic quintet; a sexist and demonstrably
untrue claim. Others simply didn’t get what her music was about, dismissing it as
so much hippy twaddle. As the normally on-point Richard Cook writes in
his Jazz Encyclopedia, "Her albums of her own music often come
across as soft-headed and incoherent rambling… one wonders if she would
have enjoyed any attention at all if she had remained plain Alice McLeod." Such wrong-headed attitudes are thankfully on the wane. Coltrane was
hugely respected by the heavyweight musicians she worked with, who were
clearly less hung up on genre boundaries than many critics. Her music
has always attracted open-minded music fans - Journey In Satchidananda is one of the
cult albums – but in recent years it has enjoyed a new lease of life,
with Radiohead, Four Tet and Sunn 0))) among the acts paying homage.
The Los Angeles beats & jazz community centred around her nephew
Stephen Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, has played a key role in raising her
profile, and there’s undoubtedly a heady whiff of Alice in Kamasi
Washington’s symphonic jazz arrangements. She’s also a major influence
on contemporary jazz innovators like Joshua Abrams and Amirtha Kidambi,
who clearly respond to her unorthodox approach. Born in Detroit in 1937, the young Alice McLeod was a musical
prodigy, learning piano from an early age, and playing organ in Mount
Olive Baptist Church by the age of nine. Gospel remained a great love
and its influence can be heard throughout her work. In her teens, she
discovered bebop through her older half-brother, the bassist Ernie
Farrow, and was entranced. Before she was twenty, she had gigged with
saxophonists Cannonball Adderley and Sonny Stitt. She later moved to
Paris where she studied piano with the great Bud Powell. She returned to
the US after her first marriage ended, where she played with vibist
Terry Gibbs (she appears on his 1963 album Plays Jewish Melodies In Jazztime) who introduced her to John Coltrane in 1963. He was her soulmate and collaborator, and together they had four
children before John’s untimely death from liver cancer in 1967. Her
music and spirituality helped her overcome the trauma of losing her
husband at 30, and in 1968 she released the first of her twenty solo
albums, the beautiful A Monastic Trio. In the 1970s, she became a disciple of Swami Satchidananda (the guru
who opened Woodstock) and took on the name Turiyasangitananda. She soon
became a spiritual leader herself, opening the Vedantic Centre in 1975,
and the Sai Anantam Ashram eight years later. As a result, she drifted
away from the music business, although she continued to record
devotional music for her community. Those recordings enjoy their first
commercial release with the new compilation on Luaka Bop, The Ecstatic Music Of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda; a real cause for celebration. Before her death in 2007, she returned to the studio for one final album proper, the wonderful Translinear Light. Read on, as we unpack her legacy. Something About John Coltrane Alice Coltrane joined her husband’s band in 1966, recording a number
of studio sessions including the final album released during his
lifetime, Expression, and the posthumously released Stellar Regions. She also appeared on several live recordings, including Offering: Live At Temple University,
a phenomenal set recorded in Philadelphia in 1966, but only released in
2015. Alice’s piano playing on these albums is less flashily virtuosic
than McCoy Tyner’s, but it’s highly distinctive nonetheless, with the
extended harmonies, rippling modal lines and driving bass she would
develop further on her own albums. She hooks up beautifully with bassist
Jimmy Garrison and drummer Rashied Ali, riding the latter’s
multi-directional flow, while providing rhythmic and harmonic anchors
when necessary. She more than proves herself of being willing and able
to follow her husband on his ecstatic journeys to the outer reaches. Following John’s death in 1967, Alice founded the independent Coltrane Records to release the jointly credited Cosmic Music,
featuring two 1966 tracks by the John Coltrane Quintet, and two new
pieces she had recorded with her first quartet (with Pharoah Sanders,
Jimmy Garrison and Ben Riley) at her Long Island home studio in 1968.
Highlights include John’s ‘Reverend King’, where a light, folkish melody
erupts into a wild collective improvisation, and Alice’s ‘The Sun’, a
modal piano piece that opens with a spoken word invocation recorded by
her husband and Sanders in 1966. By pairing her own music with her
husband’s, Alice announced her intention to continue on the visionary
path they had mapped out together. That approach met with some
controversy, not least in 1972, when Alice added string, organ and bass
overdubs to two 1966 tracks to create half of the John Coltrane album Infinity.
Jazz purists cried blasphemy, but as Alice repeatedly pointed out, the
project was a realisation of her and John’s original vision. As she
told The Wire magazine in 2002, "We had a conversation about
every detail; [John] was showing me how the piece could include other
sounds, blends, tonalities and resonances such as strings. He talked
about cosmic sounds, higher dimensions, astral levels and other worlds,
and realms of music and sound that I could feel." The results are
fascinating and rather gorgeous, offering a glimpse where John might
have gone next had he lived. The Harp Towards the end of his life, John Coltrane decided to buy a harp,
hoping that the instrument would help him rethink his approach to
harmony and texture. The harp took months to build and wasn’t delivered
to the family home until after his death. Alice would later recall how,
if the windows were open, a strong breeze would make the harp’s strings
hum, as if it was being played by some invisible force. She soon
mastered the instrument, developing the dreamy rippling style that can
be heard on ensemble recordings and beautiful solo pieces like ‘Wisdom
Eye’ from 1976’s Eternity. This sublime live clip captures her
solo harp playing in all its glory; if your eyes are still dry by the
end of it, there is no hope for you. New Beginnings Alice Coltrane’s solo debut Monastic Trio (1968) is one of her
finest, confidently establishing her compositional voice with a series
of tunes that combine Easter modes with blues and gospel tonalities. As
the sole lead instrumentalist, Coltrane plays the shit out of the piano,
particularly on ‘Ohnedaruth’ and ‘Gospel Trane’, where she brings her
rippling, harp-like phrasing to complex modal structures. The
gracefulness of her right-hand playing is underpinned by a gutsy sense
of swing that reflects her gospel and bebop roots. The harp makes its
first outing on Side B, as Coltrane conjures shimmering clouds of tone
over Garrison’s exploratory bass (I’ll even wager that ‘Lovely Sky Boat’
is an influence on Parliament’s simultaneously sublime and ridiculous
‘Silent Boatman’, with its ‘Skye Boat Song’ references and luscious
harp). The following year’s Huntington Ashram Monastery is an equally
fine trio outing, with Rashied Ali on drums and erstwhile Miles Davis
bassist Ron Carter stepping in for Garrison. 1970’s Ptah, The El Daoud
offers an expanded sound, replacing Ali with Riley, and bringing in
Sanders and Joe Henderson on saxophones and flute. It’s a stone-cold
classic. Carter and Riley are a more in-the-pocket rhythm section than
Garrison and Ali, providing a solid, funky backbone for the title
track’s expansive Egyptian strut. Henderson’s warm, hip style contrasts
nicely with Sander’s weirder expressions, while Coltrane dazzles with
undulating piano leads and strident gospel riffs. ‘Turiya And
Ramakrishna’ is a deeply soulful piano ballad, its blues inflected with
Eastern modes, while ‘Blue Nile’ is a blissed-out spiritual jazz gem,
with Coltrane on harp and the saxophonists doubling up on flutes. The highest song of bliss: Journey In Satchidananda (1971) Coltrane met her guru Swami Satchidananda in 1970, travelling to
India with him, and taking on the name Turiyasangitananda. Sangit means
music in Sanskrit, and Coltrane translated her adopted name as ‘the
transcendental lord’s highest song of bliss’. Hinduism, she felt, could
best accommodate the Universalist vision she and John had explored
together, and that syncretic approach is reflected in the world music
fusion of Journey In Satchidananda. The title track is Coltrane’s
best known tune, and deservedly so, with harp and tamboura wrapping
themselves around Cecil McBee’s mantra-like bassline. ‘Isis And Osiris’
reflects Coltrane’s interest in Egyptian cosmology, with Vishnu Wood’s
oud cutting through the mystical drift. This is the album which begins
Coltrane’s voyage beyond jazz, and it’s as innovative as it is
accessible. Infinite music: Universal Consciousness (1971), World Galaxy (1972), Lord Of Lords (1972). Coltrane’s final three albums for Impulse are her most radical,
weaving together European modernism, Indian classical, psychedelic rock,
gospel and modal jazz to create a truly cosmic music. These albums
largely eschew horns for strings and Wurlitzer organ, reflecting her
fondness for flowing sounds. As she said in 1971, ‘the instruments which
require breathing are more in line with what’s happening on an earthly
level, but the instruments that can produce a sound that’s continuous,
to me, express the eternal, the infinite.’ Universal Consciousness is arguably her masterpiece, an
utterly mind-blowing album that is still hard to fathom 46 years on. The
astounding title track hits with the force of a meteor, as slashing
atonal strings – co-arranged with Ornette Coleman – lay waster to your
speaker cones over Jack De Johnette and Rashied Ali’s twin drum barrage.
The organ-led ‘Battle At Armageddon’ is one of the heaviest pieces
Coltrane recorded, as she teams up with Kali, El Daoud and Jesus Christ
to vanquish demonic forces. Her Wurlitzer playing is wild, as she uses
the tone wheel to emulate the swoops and bends of her husband’s soprano
saxophone, and embarks on freewheeling modal runs that touch on Indian
classical music, gospel, and Terry Riley’s wilder flights. The breadth
of her spiritual interests is reflected in titles like ‘Oh Allah’ and
‘Hare Krishna’ and ‘The Ankh Of Amen-Ra’. Truly visionary music. Coltrane handles all the string arrangements on World Galaxy
laying dense, billowing clouds of strings over stormy bass and
percussion while she lets rip on organ, piano and harp. Her take on ‘My
Favourite Things’ is nuts, with the strings modulating from breezy major
to dramatic minor, while Coltrane opens vast black holes of organ. The
fulcrum of the album is the ‘Galaxy…’ trilogy, where Coltrane elevates
her music to the astral plane. ‘Galaxy Around Olodumare’ is free jazz
via Stravinsky and Stockhausen, with Frank Lowe’s raw saxophone burning a
hole through gaseous string abstractions, before some sudden tape edits
turn the universe inside out. ‘Galaxy In Turiya’ is more consonant,
with Coltrane’s harp drifting over luscious strings, while the symphonic
re-imagining of ‘Galaxy In Satchidananda’ sounds like the birth of a
new planet. Lord Of Lords has Coltrane’s trio going head to head with a
full orchestra, with some intriguing versions of Stravinsky and Dvorak
themes. The albums Coltrane subsequently recorded for Warners, most
notably Eternity (1976) and the awesome live set Transfiguration
(1978), push her sound in a more accessible, but no less rewarding,
direction, with inventive big band arrangements and flourishes of Latin
percussion alongside the strings, piano, harp and organ. Guest Spots And Collaborations In addition to her own projects, Coltrane guested on a number of albums by jazz heavyweights, including McCoy Tyner’s splendid Extensions (recorded 1970, released 1974) and Charlie Haden’s very fine 1976 duets album Closeness. She also worked outside of jazz, contributing harp to Laura Nyro’s 1970 album Christmas And The Beads Of Sweat. Check out the incredible ‘Map To The Treasure’, where Coltrane’s harp ripples gorgeously behind Nyro’s vocal and piano. Her most sustained collaborative projects, however, are the 1974
albums she made with saxophonist Joe Henderson and Carlos Santana,
respectively. Henderson’s The Elements is a concept album
exploring the classical model of the cosmos. ‘Earth’ is the highlight,
with Coltrane laying a tamboura drone over a deliciously slow and
deliberate groove, as Henderson plays superbly off Michael White’s hip
violin jabs. It’s not unlike a benign cousin to the vicious tabla-funk
of Miles Davis’s ‘Black Satin’. A spacey interlude sees the drums drop
out, as Kenneth Nash narrates cosmic wisdom over flute, tabla and harp,
and then we’re back into the main theme, with White and Henderson
raising the pressure over that indelible groove. llluminations is less well regarded ("Carlos attempts once
again to reproduce his own alpha waves on guitar and Mrs Coltrane
contributes background music barely worthy of ‘Kung Fu’", sniffs the
self-styled Dean of Rock Critics Robert Christgau) but it’s worth a
listen if you can get with the idea of Santana noodling over lush
strings. It’s not all chilled-out music to meditate to: ‘Angel Of
Sunlight’ burns, as the group attempt a jazz-rock take on John
Coltrane’s late music. Much of the track is taken up with Santana
shredding over Jack De Johnette’s hard-driving drum barrage, but Alice
shows the boys how it’s done with an irradiating Wurlitzer solo. Devotional music In 1975 Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda became founder and director
of the Vedantic Centre. Her final studio albums for Warners, Radha-Krsna Nama Sankirtana and Transcendence
(both 1977) reflect this new stage in her life by exploring traditional
Hindu songs, while maintaining a connection to jazz through their
complex harmonies and extended instrumental breaks. The growth of her
spiritual community led to the establishment of the Sai Anantam Ashram
in Cornell, California, in 1983, where she quietly began recording
devotional music. She shared these with her followers via a series of
private press cassettes, which are now collectors’ items. Selections
from Turiya Sings (1982), Divine Songs (1987), Infinite Chants (1990), and Glorious Chants (1995) appear on the new compilation World Spiritual Classics Vol. 1: The Ecastatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda. The music is absolutely stunning, with its heady mix of Hindu
devotional music from the Indian and Nepalese traditions, gospel,
spiritual jazz and New Age music. Don’t let the New Age tag put you off.
There’s nothing hippy dippy about this music: it is heavy. The
arrangements are primarily for organ and synthesiser, with Coltrane
joined on vocals by her students. The lightness of the melodies,
combined with the density of the drone, is totally mind-bending, with
organ and synth laying out huge blocks of chordal bass under the
heavenly voices. Coltrane rarely solos, but occasionally adds subtle
right hand variations and weird modulations. Best of all are the vast,
sweeping synth glissandi she uses to ramp up the intensity of the music,
an effect that recalls her orchestral arrangements of the 1970s, while
elevating the listener to even higher planes of cosmic bliss. I could
listen to those whooshing synths sounds on a loop, although I might
never come down. Coltrane’s alto vocals are gorgeous and deeply felt, not least on the
impossibly beautiful ‘Er Ra’, where she sings at the top of her range
over harp and strings. She’s joined on the joyous call-and-response
kirtans by choirs and other soloists, giving these traditional Hindu
hymns a gospel fervour that is matched by the grooving organ and
handclaps. In addition to the traditional material, there’s a version
of ‘Journey In Satchidananda’ that leaves me breathless, as a choir
sings the theme over monumental suspended synth chords that seem to be
played by Shiva herself. In the second half, male vocalist Sairam Iyer
enters with an impassioned raga and I’m completely sent. Luaka Bop and
the Coltrane family can’t be praised enough for making this incredible
music more widely available. The 21st century Alice Coltrane: Translinear Light (2004) Alice Coltrane came out of semi-retirement in the early 2000s to work
with her son, the saxophonist and producer Ravi Coltrane, on what would
be her final album. As Ravi told the journalist Ashley Kahn, the aim
was to make a modern day Alice Coltrane album, ‘forward thinking’ with
‘a little bit of historical influence there’. Featuring a sympathetic
cast of collaborators including her old friends Haden and De Johnette,
as well as Ravi and his brother Oran on reeds, Translinear Light
celebrates her musical and spiritual interests: she revisits her
classics ‘Blue Nile’ and ‘Sita Ram’, engages in some stunning modal
interplay with Ravi on the gorgeous title track, and channels her gospel
roots on a shimmering version of the traditional ‘Walk With Me’. That
gospel influence is deeply felt on the Hindu devotional song ‘Satya Sai
Isha’, where the Sai Anantam Ashram Singers summon the spirit over
grooving organ, shakers and hand-claps. Halfway through, Coltrane
doubles the tempo, and the whole thing takes off in a soaring expression
of joy. She brings her synths down from the Ashram for blissed out
‘Jagadishwar’ and ‘Hymn’, while her Wurlitzer organ the drives the
gospel tune ‘This Train’ down the cosmic railway. Her husband’s music is
represented by ‘Cresent’, ‘Leo’, and the bonus track ‘Impressions’ (Interstellar Light), a fiery organ wig-out with De Johnette channelling the Rashied Ali of Interstellar Space. A beautiful and generous album. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/02/arts/music/alice-coltrane-ashtram-world-spirituality-classics.html
Alice Coltrane’s Ashram Recordings Finally Have a Wide Release by MIKE RUBIN MAY 2, 2017 New York Times
PHOTOS: ALICE COLTRANE AND HER SON RAVI (center)
The
bhajans would begin with a call-and-response chant of the names of
Hindu gods, and then singers like Panduranga John Henderson, who toured
with Ray Charles, would solo as the songs built in an improvisational
way. “You never knew how long the song was going to be,” said Michelle
Coltrane, Ms. Coltrane’s daughter. “There was hand percussion, Indian
drums, high voices and low voices and children’s voices, and once you
got to the right number it all blended in and sounded very beautiful.”
Alice
Coltrane’s great-nephew, Steven Ellison, who records as Flying Lotus,
also visited Auntie, as he called her, on Sundays at the ashram. “That
was my church experience,” he said in a 2010 interview for The New York Times. “She was really inspiring. I’ve never met anyone like her, ever.”
As
Ms. Coltrane wrote in an insert for “Divine Songs,” a cassette released
in 1990, “chanting is a devotional engagement, one that allows the
chanter to soar to higher realms of spiritual consciousness.”
Luaka Bop will release “World Spirituality Classics 1: The Ecstatic Music Of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda” this week.Credit:
Luaka Bop
Ms.
Coltrane had long been an ecumenical spiritual seeker. She began
playing the organ in Mount Olive Baptist Church in Detroit at 9, and
made her first album appearance in 1963 on “Terry Gibbs Plays Jewish
Melodies in Jazztime.” She soon met and began playing with John
Coltrane, who died in 1967,
leaving her a widow with four young children. In “Monument Eternal,”
her 1977 memoir of her spiritual awakening, Ms. Coltrane describes the
period after her husband’s death as one of “tapas,” or austerity, “the
taking upon one’s self of a voluntary suffering for some spiritual
good.” She experienced sleeplessness, extreme weight loss, visions and,
she wrote, “meetings and confrontations with both disembodied souls and
phantasmagoric entities.”
After two years of tapas, she found peace in the counsel of Swami Satchidananda,
the Indian guru who had given the opening remarks at Woodstock. Ms.
Coltrane made several pilgrimages to India, where she received a
revelation to leave her secular life behind. She founded the Vedantic
Center in 1976 in San Francisco, which eventually relocated to the
Agoura ashram in 1983. She changed her name to Turiyasangitananda (“the
transcendent bliss of God’s highest song”), having her children practice
spelling it out with fridge magnets.
Ms.
Coltrane released seven albums on the Impulse! label in the late 1960s
and early ’70s and five more for Warner Bros., pushing beyond jazz into
what might be termed “cosmic music,” the title of the 1968 album
credited to her and Coltrane. After 1978, she devoted herself to the
study of Vedic scriptures, and to the bhajans on the Luaka Bop
collection. “This is music that she was playing every Sunday, so this
was her life now,” Michelle Coltrane said. “She wasn’t really going
back.” (In 2004, however, Ms. Coltrane was coaxed by her son Ravi to
record one final jazz album, “Translinear Light,” and perform a few shows.)
As part of the New York edition of the Red Bull Music Academy Festival,
Luaka Bop is presenting two concerts on May 21 in Queens that will try
to recreate the ashram’s vibe. Mr. Botofasina is the musical director of
the first portion of the event, which will take place at sunset and
feature a seven-member choir from the ashram, now called Sai Anantam.
(Ravi Coltrane, himself an acclaimed saxophonist, will lead a tribute to
her jazz achievements.) “This is the first time that we’ll be
attempting to stay very consistently with what she recorded,” Mr.
Botosafina said, “and pay homage and re-enact that as accurately as
possible.”
But
just as the music is finally reaching a larger audience, the fate of
the ashram, which is down to about a dozen members, is in doubt: The
Coltrane estate put the land up for sale in 2015, though there have been
no takers at the $5 million asking price.
“The
ashram is ending, but the music is now becoming what the spiritual
practice is, and I think that’s an amazingly timed thing,” Mr. Evelev
said. “This music then also takes on this other life and hopefully gets
to tour around the world, and the people who sang it then will continue
to sing it.”
"Divine music is a curative virtue; it is a gift from God that
brings healing and comfort to the soul. This music can uplift one’s
spirit up to a higher dimension of being that is filled with peace and
joy. Divine music is the sound of true life, wisdom, and bliss. This
music transcends geographical boundaries, language barriers, age
factors; and whether educated or uneducated, it reaches deep into the
heart and soul, sacred and holy, like an Infinite sound of glory
entering the Lord's sanctuary." –- Alice Coltrane (1937 – 2007)
Universal Consciousness: The Spiritual Awakening of Alice Coltrane by Britt Robson
May 3, 2016 Red Bull Academy
It
was inevitable that the legacy of Alice Coltrane would long be obscured
in the massive shadow cast by her husband. John Coltrane, after all,
was the most venerated and influential tenor saxophonist in the history
of jazz music.
But the closer one examines the genuinely phenomenal
life, music and spirit of Alice Coltrane, the more inevitable it seems
that she will also someday receive her proper due. The most striking
aspect of her biography is that she became a master musician and a
spiritual guru in the same way, by carrying forth all her accumulated
wisdom in a welcoming synthesis, rather than shedding, judging and
discriminating her way to “growth” and “maturity.”
Along this path, Coltrane transformed clichés like
“generosity of spirit” and “universal consciousness” into practical
implements and palpable goals through the evidence of her music and the
abiding example of her devotion. And although it became a singular and
generally underappreciated journey, there is some wonderful symmetry in
her taking what had been a shared vision with John Coltrane further than
anybody would have imagined.
Alice
McLeod began absorbing a broad and vivid swath of music and religion at
an early age. Her parents directed, played and sang in the choirs at
Mt. Olive Baptist Church in Detroit at a time when the city was an
industrial hub first for the machinery of World War II and later as a
car manufacturer during the economic boom of the postwar era. At her
request, Alice began receiving private piano lessons from a neighbor
when she was seven. Her performances on piano and organ inspired the
congregation to sponsor her music education at a community school.
By her mid-teens she was a prodigy, in demand to
perform at other churches, including those that practiced the
hand-clapping, foot-stomping call-and-response services more common in
the south. According to a story she related to her biographer, Franya J.
Berkman, Alice was playing and vocalizing with the Lemon Gospel Singers
in a church one day when “The Lord just completely swept through.” She
describes worshipers falling out from the visitation, some being
attended to by nurses while others were carried downstairs. Alice
described this service, and others like it, as “the gospel experience,
musically, of my life!”
It was during these postwar years of her teens and
early twenties that Detroit became the “motor city,” an industrial
boomtown, ushering in what was referred to as a golden era in both
gospel and bebop jazz. Through her older half-brother Ernest Farrow, an
in-demand saxophonist and later bassist, Alice learned the rhythm &
blues spin Detroit’s musicians put on the modern language of bop. She
played percussion in her high school marching band, self-taught the
sidemen in her own jazz trio, and, whenever possible, tagged along with
Farrow to hang out with national-caliber talents such as pianist Barry
Harris, bassist Cecil McBee and saxophonist Joe Henderson.
Alice’s
first working band was called The Premiers, who performed a blend of
gospel, jazz and rhythm & blues and included trombonist George
Bohanon, bassist Anthony Jackson and drummer Oliver Jackson, who would
each go on to appear on dozens of records.
“She was proud to say she was from Detroit,” says Alice’s eldest child
and only daughter, Miki Coltrane. “There’s a picture of my mom in church
next to this huge organ when she couldn’t have been more than 10 or 11
years old. She used to earn a few dollars playing it and give it to my
grandma, Annie McLeod. At high school there was Marvin Gaye and the
Gordy kids — the Gordy family [before Berry Gordy founded Motown
Records] had a store like a 7/11 down the block.”
In 1960 when she was 23, Alice married Kenneth
“Pancho” Hagood, a renowned bebop scat singer eleven years her senior,
before the couple relocated to Paris. Their time in Europe was brief —
less than a year — but consequential. She became pregnant with her first
child, Michelle, now known as Miki Coltrane. She divorced Hagood,
Miki’s father, who was besieged by a drug habit. And she spent much of
her time studying with the seminal bebop pianist Bud Powell, who became a
pronounced influence on her phrasing and approach while also
emboldening her to take chances in the music.
This bold confidence impressed Bennie Maupin —a bass clarinetist who was mentored by Alice and later played on Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew
album — after she returned to Detroit. “Some people play it safe. They
play things pretty much the same way every time,” Maupin told Berkman.
“Alice never did…she was always reaching for something, you know?”
Maupin and Alice also shared a love for a then-new release by John Coltrane, Africa/Brass
and together saw Coltrane perform for the first time when he played
Detroit in January 1962. After Alice was hired to play in a band led by
the vibraphonist Terry Gibbs who was impressed with her Powell-like
prowess on piano and the fact that she could also join him on vibes, the
group opened for the John Coltrane Quartet during an extended
engagement at Birdland in New York in the summer of 1963. That is where
John and Alice Coltrane met and fell in love.
There is no question that John Coltrane delved into
Eastern spirituality and religion years before he met Alice. “John was
very aware of the Vedantic, the Hindi way of reincarnation and other
modes of worship and divinity, of the divine being within instead of up
on a cloud,” said Ashley Kahn, the author of A Love Supreme, a book about John Coltrane’s classic album. “He had read the Bhagavad Gita and Autobiography of a Yogi,
before he met Alice. “But part of their attraction was certainly that
she was predisposed to be on the same sort of musical and spiritual
quest, and that they could share that path together.”
From the moment Alice notified Gibbs that she was quitting his band
because John had asked her to go to Sweden with him before they were
married, the Coltranes traveled the world, absorbing cultures.
“They both loved Indian instruments, like the
tamboura,” Miki Coltrane remembers. “But there were others too; they
brought back a koto and some other instruments from Japan. We had
bagpipes in our living room.”
They also had children — three sons between 1964 and
1967. At first, motherhood cut into Alice’s musical career. As Kahn
puts it, “While John was upstairs [in their house in Fort Dix, New
Jersey] meditating and praying five days solid while composing A Love Supreme, she was taking care of the children and supporting him.”
In July of 1967, just four years after he met Alice
at Birdland, John Coltrane died of liver cancer. He had been complaining
of pain for months, but held off seeing a doctor and they diagnosed it
too late.
"They brought back a koto and some other instruments from Japan. We had bagpipes in our living room."
Six
weeks before her 30th birthday, Alice was a widower with four children,
bereft of her soulmate, family breadwinner and chief outlet for her own
musical career. Meanwhile, the counterculture was seizing the popular
imagination on a number of fronts, be it the Summer of Love, the heyday
of the Black Power Movement, or the vogue of alternative religions and
forms of consciousness. The assassinations of Martin Luther King and
Bobby Kennedy were just over the horizon.
Alice Coltrane was breaking down.
In her spiritual memoir from 1977, also titled Monument Eternal,
she describes what seems like a hellish existence from roughly 1968 to
1970. Unable to sleep or eat properly, her weight fell from 118 to 95
pounds. She had hallucinations in which trees spoke, various beings
existed on astral planes, and the sounds of “a planetary ether” could
spin through her brain and knock her unconscious. Her family was
concerned for her health, and more than once she was sent to the
hospital due to self-inflicted wounds, including a third-degree burn so
awful that her blackened flesh fell off her hand.
The overarching theme of this riveting, frequently
gruesome account is not that Alice fell into the nadir of her existence,
but rather that she experienced tapas, a vital period of
trial, tribulation and transition. She explains tapas as a time of
unremitting austerity, designed to cleanse and enhance her spirit. The
relentless and yet serene path she followed in the many decades after
her prolonged ordeal validates this outlandish interpretation of events.
The music under her own name from this period seems
intended to further the musical and spiritual direction of her late
husband. The first song on the first record is an elegy entitled,
“Ohnedaruth,” the name she gave his spirit, which is the Sanskrit word
for “compassion.” The sidemen on the three records from 1968-70, A Monastic Trio, Huntington Ashram Monastery and Ptah the El Daoud, are primarily her late husband’s cohorts.
And yet, even with many stylistic similarities, we
can hear Alice beginning to figure out how to fill the enormous void
under daunting circumstances. The songs are mostly hers, modal tunes
with somber moods. But there is strength and sustenance too. Her playing
is more prominent, and often she is performing on the harp John bought
her shortly before he died. As with the piano, she is playing the entire
instrument, set free on glissando arpeggios that Kahn describes as
“very loose, almost like water flowing back and forth, very spiritual
and meditative.”
But there is also the soulful, swinging bottom that is the rhythm of the Christian church —one song on The Monastic Trio
is explicitly entitled “Gospel Trane.” There is also more overt blues
and rhythm & blues than late-period John Coltrane was invoking,
luminous piano-blues like the song “Turiya and Ramakrishna” on Ptah the El Daoud.
There are the introductory bass ostinatos and squawking jazz horns
common to John Coltrane, set off by sparkling harp and mournful piano
from Alice, who wrote sophisticated jazz arrangements and improvisations
spangled with a dab of funk. Her first three releases are appropriately
the music of someone who is not John Coltrane but who loves him and
cherishes his art. At the time, many critics heard the root influence
but were not ready to relate to or reward Alice’s distinctive
embellishments and so dismissed the records as pale imitations.
The
tapas of austerity helped prepare Alice for a spiritual ally, Swami
Satchidanada, an Indian guru introduced to her by another transplanted
New York musician from Detroit, Vishnu Wood. Although he was somewhat of
a celebrity guru — he came to the United States as a guest of the
visual artist Peter Max, and even opened the Woodstock Festival —
Satchidanada taught the Hindu philosophy of Advaita Vedanta, which
promoted the concept of self-realization, the notion that their soul is
not different than god.
Describing this self-realization in a 1988 radio
interview, Alice explained, “It just means you go to your fullest and
highest potential and not be limited by some tenets of some doctrine
that says we come here, here’s the minister, and we pay our tithes and
go back to our home or our job or business or whatever and do everything
you want.” Advaita Vedanta did not preclude the admission of other
faiths — on the contrary it sought to promote global understanding among
all religions for people to better serve and love each other, which is
the path to their “fullest and highest potential.”
In her Alice Coltrane biography, Franya Berkman
makes two incisive observations about Alice’s embrace of Advaita
Vedanta. “[A]s an extraordinarily self-disciplined, independent, and
inner-directed artist with a strong predilection for religious
expression, Alice was uniquely suited to pursue the yogic and devotional
lifestyle that the swami advocated,” she wrote. Also: “In its
inclusiveness and emphasis on personal potential, Vedanta is similar to
the spiritual and creative philosophy that John Coltrane developed.”
The first musical manifestation of this commitment was Journey in Satchidananda,
recorded in November, 1970, a month before Alice took her first trip to
the holy sites of India with the Swami. From the opening title cut, the
arching drone of the tamboura, an Indian stringed instrument played by
Tulsi, is pervasive, announcing a new Eastern influence that is further
enriched by the oud of Vishnu Wood. Many of the John Coltrane
touchstones remain, especially the bass ostinatos from Cecil McBee and
Charlie Haden. But even the D-minor blues, “Something About John
Coltrane,” feels tinged with Eastern spirituality, as Alice’s soulful
piano and the beseeching soprano of Pharoah Sanders falls under the
tamboura’s sway.
After she returned home from India, Alice unfurled what is arguably the masterpiece of her commercial recording career with Universal Consciousness, recorded less than six months after Journey in Satchidananda.
Voracious in her desire to communicate and receive love and wisdom —
and unearth it within herself — Alice added Turiya to her name, the
Sanskrit word for “pure consciousness.” Following a divine vision, she
also plays the Wurlitzer organ for the first time on record, an
instrument that would dominate her religious music in the future. Her
extensive liner notes conjoin myths and texts from various religions and
read like a gothic melodrama. She composed string arrangements for four
violinists and got the great avant garde jazz iconoclast Ornette
Coleman to transcribe them. At least two of her original compositions,
“Hare Krishna” and “Sita Rama,” are based on traditional chants, another
component of her later, privately released work.
Universal Consciousness anticipates the
“world music” movement by more than a decade. It is a bountiful blend of
a symbolically omnificent organ that absorbs the traditions of the
Black church and Indian chanting rituals. Euro-classical strings are
embellished and taken further Eastward by the flowing harp passages. The
droning tamboura hovers over an ace jazz rhythm section of bassist
Jimmy Garrison and drummer Jack DeJohnette, who suggest rhythmic frames
and sturdy timbres for the varied meters and chromatic harmonies
mushrooming out of the lush mix.
Universal Consciousness
became the first album of a trilogy that ended Alice’s relationship
with Impulse, the label that contained her husband’s most adventurous
recordings and all her own up to this point. Both World Galaxy (recorded in November 1971) and Lord of Lords (the summer of 1972) feature a 16-piece string orchestra, which is used to interpret A Love Supreme,
and another John Coltrane-associated work, “My Favorite Things,” on the
former record and pieces by Euro-classical composers Stravinsky and
Dvorak on the latter album.
The strings are less effective — especially on the John Coltrane pieces — on World Galaxy,
which derives its strength from Alice’s protean, ever-shifting
instrumentation on organ, piano and harp, and from the saxophone blasts
of jazz tenor Frank Lowe. Lord of Lords centers much of its
musical energy around the organ (again anticipating Alice’s more overtly
spiritual work), especially on her intrepid, jazz-oriented version of
Stravinsky’s “Firebird Suite.”
But the crowning glory of Lord of Lords is her reclamation of Dvorak’s “Largo,” from the composer’s New World Symphony.
That it was taken by the composer from Negro spirituals he or his
assistants heard was made plain when one of his former students
transformed it back to a spiritual, entitled “Going Home,” that further
evolved into a popular hymn and part of the jazz repertoire.
The Los Angeles-based electronic musician Flying Lotus is a grand-nephew of Alice’s, and in The Pitchfork Review recalls “Going Home” being a popular song frequently played at family funerals, including Alice’s own in 2007.
On Lord of Lords, Alice leads off “Going
Home” with harp but switches to organ and executes a driving
gospel-blues solo on the instrument accompanied by Haden on bass and
[drummer] Ben Riley on drums. The bones of Dvorak’s arrangement are
there. The depth, tone and tenor of the piece is restored to its
original owners. On her benediction with Impulse, Alice Turiya Coltrane
once again didn’t leave anything behind.
After she returned home from India, Alice unfurled a masterpiece: Universal Consciousness.
In 1972, the same year in which she recorded Lord of Lords,
Alice relocated to the Bay Area of California, where she founded the
Vedantic Center in a San Francisco storefront. Miki, the oldest of her
four children, was twelve at the time.
“When we were packing up the house, we were worried
about missing our friends, but she said that when she was in meditation
[it was revealed to her that] we were supposed to move there,” Miki
says. Four years later, when Alice had another revelation, instructing
her to abandon the secular life and become a spiritual teacher in the
Hindu tradition, the children were first informed by a note on the
refrigerator, announcing that her name was now Swamini
Turiyasangitananda. By then, Alice had already relocated the Vedantic
Center to a house next door to the family home in Woodland Hills,
California.
The 1976 revelation instructed her to build an
ashram, and in 1983 she opened the Shanti Anantam Ashram on 50 acres in
nearby Agoura Hills, California. By their own accounting, Alice’s
children were raised well in this intensely spiritual yet occasionally
disruptive environment.
“We were required to go to services until we were
18, and to learn all the songs, of course, but she allowed us to be
children, giggling and poking each other,” Miki said. “When the students
lived next door to us, there were courses given on Wednesdays and
Sundays, but the students would also cook and we had get-togethers in
the rec room, with chances to play violin or read poetry. Most of them
were religious-based, but there was still a family feeling to it. The
services were much more amazing at 30 years old than at 15, when you
were hurrying to get into the car to go to the beach. But it bloomed
into being a uniquely devotional experience.”
When Purusha Hickson first heard Universal Consciousness,
he set aside the dishes he was bussing and laid down on the floor to
fully absorb it while others covered his shift. It was 1974 and Hickson
was a 20-year-old kid who had hitchhiked across the country and was
volunteering at One Mind Temple, a San Francisco crash pad serving
vegetarian meals in the Fillmore.
“When I heard her music, in my heart I could tell
she knew something. I had to meet her,” Hickson said. “People who knew
her as Mother Turiya called her up and she said to bring me to see her.
She was playing at the 60th birthday of Swami Satchidanada and afterward
I got an opportunity to meet her. She was so down-to-earth, with no
pretensions, but at the same time there was this spark of light about
her.”
Hickson was initiated into the Vedantic Center
exactly a year after that meeting, ten days after his 21st birthday in
December 1975. He went on to live at the center in Woodland Hills, and
later at the ashram. Today he holds a position of honor as the
keyboardist in Alice’s stead at the Agoura Hills location, now known as
Sai Anatam Ashram.
Hickson had a front-row seat for the changes taking
place in Alice’s music. In the mid-to-late ’70s, “she was still playing
concerts, but with us she emphasized chanting. She talked about growing
closer to god through the power of sound, with the recitation of
mantras. And when she played it was otherworldly. Her organ was intense
stuff that reminded me of John Coltrane’s saxophone.”
Alice’s
move to the West Coast and immersion in religion drew her focus away
from commercial recordings. There were collaborations with artists such
as Carlos Santana and Joe Henderson, but the first album after Lord of Lords under her own name, Eternity,
is a pastiche. Recorded for her new label, Warner Brothers, in the
summer of 1975, there are songs overtly connected to rhythm & blues
(with her old Premiers bandmate George Bohanon), Afro-Cuban percussion,
another bout of strings with Stravinsky, and a series of spiritual
tracks albeit with a choir accustomed to Euro-classical singing.
The next two records nestle into devotion to family
and self-realization, and are clearly influenced by the revelation that
drew Swamini Turiyasangitananda out of Alice Coltrane. Radha-Krsna Nama Sankirtana,
from the late summer of 1976, features her leading her students on five
traditional Hindu chant-songs, instrumentally accompanied only by her
daughter Miki (identified as Michaelle Sita Coltrane) on tamboura for a
short track, and her son, Arjuna John Coltrane Jr., on drums during a
glorious 19-minute duet on the closer.
Transcendence, from the spring of 1977,
features a mesmerizing solo track — “Vrindavana Sanchara” — framed by
two other spiritually-infused compositions with a string quartet. But
the song-chants with her students on the back end of the album are the
real reward, for they crystallize the devotional passions of gospel
testimony and Hindu bliss in a riveting synergy.
“She used to tell us to chant from the heart and not
worry about mispronouncing names; that if you are calling to god, god
will know who you are calling to,” Hickson says. “Even when we were
chanting in Hindu, she said you don’t have to sound Indian; just give it
that universal feeling.”
She
used to tell us to chant from the heart and not worry about
mispronouncing names; that if you are calling to god, god will know who
you are calling to.
“My
mother had a totally different emphasis of attack on the devotional
songs,” said Miki Coltrane, singing a chant with the gospel tinge of
blues and funk. “Then I went to India and heard all these people
chanting and they locked it in in a different place,” she continued,
providing the familiar singsong rhythm of traditional Hindu chanting.
“It was only then that I realized what she had done — I hadn’t noticed.
It was done with respect, but [her chants] had a groove.”
The final commercial recording delivered by Alice in the 20th Century, a live double-album entitled Transfiguration,
was at once a throwback to her jazz and classical roots and a forward
immersion in spiritual rapture encased in the lineage of her late
husband. There is a moving solo piano piece for John Coltrane, entitled,
“One For The Father.” “Prema” likewise finds her on piano paired with
strings.
The rest of the music is delivered on organ,
accompanied by the ace jazz rhythm section of drummer Roy Haynes and
bassist Reggie Workman. It culminates in a blistering 37-minute workout
of John Coltrane’s “Leo,” utilizing his 12-tone system that he based on
the 12 signs of the zodiac. In her Alice Coltrane bio, Berkman claims
“her up tempo keyboard work is the most exciting of her commercial
career….she takes leave of the jazz business with a truly breathtaking
swan song.” The review at Allmusic.com simply says, “If you can own only
one Alice Coltrane record, this should be it.”
Another resplendent outlier in Alice’s musical output is Turiya Sings, arguably her most peaceful and soothing album. Originally released only through the Avatar Book Institute four years after Transfiguration
in 1982, it is Alice sing-chanting Hindu mantras over organ, strings
and synthesizer, the hauntingly beautiful vocals distilled down from a
15-hour recording session.
“When Swamini first started teaching, she never
sang. But when we moved to Woodland Hills, there were not as many people
around, and she wanted to help us until we gathered more voices,”
Hickson related. “But when she came out with Turiya Sings, it was kind
of amazing.”
Once the ashram was established in 1983, the music
Alice made reflected what was played at services there. Following the
South Asian tradition of singing “bhajans”—Hindu texts and chants
adapted to music—she went deeper into the form first explored on the
spiritual material of her late ’70s albums for Warner Brothers. As with Turiya Sings, for many years, the only way to get Divine Songs (1987), Infinite Chants (1991) and Glorious Chants (1995) was through the Avatar Book Institute or directly at the Sai Anantam Ashram itself.
Each of the records is a little different. Divine Songs has more of Alice’s individual song-chanting, whereas the Infinite Chants is geared toward the choir at the ashram and the driving sway and hand-clapping of the worshipers. Glorious Chants
was recorded in the mandir — or spacious temple — on the grounds of the
ashram and is probably the most full-throated choir recording.
“Sometimes
she obviously had an arrangement she worked on privately, and she would
teach us the voicings she wanted to hear from that,” said Shankari
Adams, another longtime student and the author of the forthcoming
biography, Portrait of Devotion: The Spiritual Life of Alice Coltrane, Swamini Turiyasangitananda.
“But the most common process I witnessed was her taking the chanting we
did during weekly worship service. That would be the bassline and then
she would go into the studio and add layers or tracks to that base line
for the devotional music. Sometimes it would be tamboura, or strings, or
percussion.” The organ was already there.
“I am a non-musician but she just let us sing from
our heart, because what she wanted from the music was the way we were
speaking to god, or about god, and the way it touched you,” said another
student, Jayalakshmi Moss. “Because of her profound ear, she knew where
to place you so were with people who knew music and would be there in
front of your face to help you.”
One of the more remarkable things about the Alice
Coltrane legacy is how this intensely spiritual music has become
something of an underground phenomena. Some of the buzz has been spurred
by Flying Lotus, who attended services at the ashram and waxes eloquent
about the beauty and power of what Alice was laying down. The
availability of this music on Youtube and other sites also exposes more
listeners to these unique bhajans. And the record Alice made at the
urging of her son Ravi Coltrane — Translinear Light, in 2003 —was another catalyst.
When people talk about reinventing standards, they may go back to the 1920s. Alice was reinterpreting ancient Vedic texts.
Among
the influential champions of Alice’s devotional music is Mark “Frosty”
McNeill, co-founder of internet radio station Dublab out of Los Angeles.
“There is this really unique blend of someone fully devoted but also
extremely talented, making records on her own schedule and her own
terms,” said McNeill, who is in the process of turning his Alice
Coltrane fixation into an audio-literary Masters thesis at USC.
“The actual musical blend continues this idea of
universality that both her and John Coltrane had. That means there are
not as many boundaries when it comes to the spiritual and the musical,”
McNeill says. “The harp is not a common instrument in jazz. The unique
string arrangements with the Eastern tonalities and the electric
instrumentation are not typically fused — it is unlike anything I have
ever heard before. Yeah it sounds like gospel, but then she is singing a
Sanskrit chant on top of a soulful Wurlitzer, with synthesizer swells
and cosmic sweeps that evoke a big bang creation of the universe.
“I mean, when people talk about reinventing
standards for jazz, they may go back to the 1920s. But Alice is
reinterpreting ancient Vedic texts that are thousands of years old with
her own unique arrangements.”
“I was born an African American Christian,” said
Jayalakshmi Moss, “and I can absolutely hear the church in her music.
But it is also absolutely unlike anything I have ever heard. Many of us
are well-traveled and we have chanted with many fine masters of
spirituality. But we all know that her blend is absolutely unique.”
Moss added that there is “lots and lots of music
that Alice recorded in our mandir that has not been released, that is
uncut. It is sacred and timeless.”
Also
unreleased is a huge, ambitious project, involving a year of rehearsals
at the ashram because the chanting is done in multiple languages,
including Sanskrit, Hebrew and English. It includes extensive
arrangements for orchestra and was planned in conjunction with her son
Ravi and performed in New Jersey in 2006. The title is The Sacred Language of Ascension, deliberately meant to harken to John Coltrane’s Ascension, perhaps his pinnacle of impassioned sheets of sound.
And as recently as this past February 27, there was a sold-out performance of Universal Consciousness
at the Portland Jazz Festival, led by Ravi Coltrane and Pharoah
Sanders.
Nearly a decade after her death, Alice Coltrane is finally in vogue, her
once checkered reputation as a jazz artist and musical visionary
buttressed for the ages. But then, she always had bigger concerns than
what people thought of her.
“People used to ask her all the time, ‘Should I call
you Alice or Swamini?’ And she would always say, ‘You can call me
either one, whatever you like,’” said Hickson.
“She taught us that people start out with an external person, a guru or
shaman, but that person will only take you so far,” said Adams. “In the
end, people have to make the journey inward, ourselves. Our only real
guru is our divine inner spirit.”
Or, as Miki Coltrane puts it, “Most people don’t
have the kind of patience, or the kind of belief, that my mother had.
She didn’t toot her own horn. She let the universe handle it.”
Alice Coltrane, Jazz Artist and Spiritual Leader, Dies at 69 by BEN RATLIFF January 15, 2007 New York Times
Alice
Coltrane, widow of the jazz saxophonist John Coltrane and the pianist
in his later bands, who extended her musical searches into a vocation as
a spiritual leader, died on Friday in Los Angeles. She was 69.
The cause was respiratory failure, said Marilyn McLeod, her sister and assistant.
Ms.
Coltrane lived in the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles near the
Sai Anantam ashram in Agoura Hills, which she had founded in 1983. Known
as Swami Turiyasangitananda, Sanskrit for “the highest song of God,”
she was the guiding presence of the 48-acre ashram, set among the Santa
Monica mountains, where 25 to 30 full-time residents study the Vedic
scriptures of ancient India, as well as Buddhist and Islamic texts.
She
was also the manager of Coltrane’s estate, as well as of his
music-publishing company, Jowcol Music, and the John Coltrane
Foundation, which has given out scholarships to music students since
2001.
As
a pianist, her playing was dense with arpeggios that suggested the
harp; the instrument had an important place in her life. One of her
childhood heroes was the Detroit-based jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby, and
she was later motivated to study that instrument by Coltrane, who loved
its sound.
Raised
in a musical family in Detroit, Ms. Coltrane played piano and organ for
church choirs and Sunday school from age 7. As a young musician in
Detroit, she was studying classical music and playing piano in jazz
clubs, in a group including her half-brother, the bassist Ernie Farrow,
and the trombonist George Bohannon.
In
her early 20s she lived briefly in Paris, where she studied informally
with the pianist Bud Powell, and was briefly married to the singer Kenny
(Pancho) Hagood, with whom she had a daughter, Michelle. She returned
to Detroit, playing in a band with her brother, and then moved to New
York in 1962. A year later she met John Coltrane.
Alice Coltrane
She
was playing vibraphone and Powell-inspired bebop piano in a group led
by the drummer Terry Gibbs at Birdland, on a double-bill with Coltrane’s
quartet. Coltrane was well established by the beginning of the 1960s,
though she hadn’t known about him for long before moving to New York;
the first time she ever heard him, she said, was on the 1961 album
“Africa/Brass.”
They
connected instantly; she moved in with him and traveled with the
Coltrane band. By the summer of 1964 they had relocated from New York
City to a house in Dix Hills, on Long Island. They married in 1965 in
Juárez, Mexico, coinciding with Coltrane’s divorce from his first wife,
Naima Grubbs. By that time she and Coltrane had already had two of their
three children together — John Jr., who died in 1982, and Ravi, who by
his 30s had become an acclaimed jazz saxophonist.
Ms.
Coltrane is survived by her sisters, Marilyn McLeod of Winnetka,
Calif., and Margaret Roberts of Detroit; her daughter, Michelle
Carbonell-Coltrane of Los Angeles; her sons Oran Coltrane of Los Angeles
and Ravi, of Brooklyn; and five grandchildren.
In
1966, as the Coltrane band’s music became wilder and more prolix, she
became its pianist. She replaced McCoy Tyner, who quit without rancor,
largely because he could no longer hear himself on the bandstand. Though
she wasn’t Mr. Tyner’s technical equal and lacked his percussive power,
she fit with the group’s new purpose; by the time of the recordings
that would become the album “Stellar Regions,” in February 1967, she was
fluid and energetic within the group’s freer new language.
She
told an interviewer that Coltrane helped her to play “thoroughly and
completely.” This meant stretching the definitions of rhythm and
harmony, but she also meant something broader; Coltrane was talking
about “universalizing” his music, creating a nondenominational religious
art that took cues from ancient history and foreign scales. He helped
her to sign a contract as a solo artist with his label, Impulse. And he
introduced her to Eastern philosophy and religion, which became the main
focus of her life.
After
Coltrane’s death from liver cancer in 1967, Ms. Coltrane took a vow of
celibacy. And at first she made music closely related to his, often
reflective, minor and modal; on piano or harp she played flowing,
harplike phrases over a deep midtempo swing, and she worked with the
bassist Jimmy Garrison and the drummer Rashied Ali from John Coltrane’s
band. On records like “A Monastic Trio,” “Ptah, the El Daoud” and
“Journey in Satchidananda,” she was able to reconcile blues phrases and
jazz rhythm with a kind of ancient, flowing sound.
Ms.
Coltrane met her guru, Swami Satchidananda, in 1970, and in more recent
years became a devotee of Sathya Sai Baba. By the early 1970s she
developed a renewed interest in the organ, because it produced a
continuous sound; she wanted to make a meditative music that wouldn’t be
interrupted by pauses for breath. Her 1972 record, “Universal
Consciousness,” with Ms. Coltrane on Wurlitzer organ and string
arrangements by Ornette Coleman, became a far-out classic. In the
mid-70s she switched to the Warner Brothers label and made four more
records, including orchestras and Hindu chants. Thereafter, until 2004,
she made records purely for religious purposes, distributing them
privately.
After
first establishing the Vedanta Center in San Francisco, she moved her
ashram to Agoura Hills, just northwest of Los Angeles, and expanded it.
In the past 10 years, she performed the occasional concert with Ravi,
and in 2004 she finally returned to recording jazz, making “Translinear
Light,” produced by Ravi, who reunited her with some old colleagues like
Charlie Haden and Jack DeJohnette, as well as a chorus of singers from
her ashram.
An obituary on Jan. 15 about Alice Coltrane, the widow and
piano accompanist of the jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, referred
incompletely to the musician Terry Gibbs, with whom she played early in
her career. Although he plays the drums, he is best known as a
vibraphonist.
Cello – Anne Goodman, Edgar Lustgarden, Jan Kelly, Jerry Kessler, Jesse Ehrlich, Raphael Kramer, Ray Kelley
Concertmaster – David Sackson, Murray Adler
Drums – Ben Riley, Rashied Ali, Clifford Jarvis, Jack DeJohnette
Flute [Alto] – Joe Henderson, Pharoah Sanders
Harp – Alice Coltrane
Organ – Alice Coltrane
Percussion – Pharoah Sanders
Piano – Alice Coltrane
Producer – Alice Coltrane, Bob Thiele, Ed Michel
Strings – Allan Schulman, Arthur Aaron, Avron Coleman, Edward Green, Harry Glickman, Henry Aaron, Irving Spice, Janet Hill, Joan Kalisch, Julien Barber, Leroy Jenkins, Robert Lipscomb, Seymour Miroff, Thomas Nickerson, William Stone
Tambourine – Majid Shabazz
Tambura [Tamboura] – Alice Coltrane,
Tulsi
Timpani [Tympani] – Elayne Jones
Viola – David Schwartz, Leonard Selic, Marilyn Baker, Myra Kestenbaum, Rollice Dale, Samuel Boghosian
Violin – Gerald Vinci, Gordon Maron, James Getzoff, Janice Gower, Leonard Malarsky, Lou Klass, Nathan Kaproff, Ronald Folsom, Ronald Kundell, Sidney Sharp, William Henderson, John Blair, Julius Brand
Alice Coltrane 16mm doc. 1970 (Black Journal) rare
The segment focuses on the life of Alice Coltrane and her children in the wake of the death of her husband, famed jazz musician John Coltrane. This film was shot sometime during 1970; three years after the death of John Coltrane. The 16mm color film print is a short documentary made for a segment of National Education Television's Black Journal television program.
This film opens with a collage of photos of jazz musician John Coltrane with a voice-over of a male narrator communicating the musical genius and personal demeanor of the renowned music artist. The voice-over ends with an open-ended statement on John Coltrane's family; leading into an interview with his wife, Alice Coltrane. Alice Coltrane discusses the influence her late husband has had on her life, both musically and spiritually.
She speaks of him being a spiritual person, although not tied to one organized religion, his vegetarian diet, and how he carved time out of his days to meditate.
There is footage of their children playing in the yard and walking with their mother. Alice plays the harp and talks about how her music is a manifestation of her spirituality. She discusses her musical career and how she balances that with being a mother and paying tribute to her late husband, but also not wanting to be defined as an extension of John Coltrane's music. Instead, when she finds herself playing some of the music he wrote, she sees herself as sharing in what he produced throughout his career. Footage of her playing the piano at a small jazz concert with a few other musicians plays for two minutes.
In the final minutes of the segment, Alice Coltrane explains her relationship with a higher power and the personal enlightenment she has felt and gained through meditation. The film ends with a dolly-out/zoom-out long shot of Alice Coltrane and her children waving from their home.
CREDIT:
Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Pearl Bowser
Caption:
This 16mm film is a documentary segment focusing on the life of Alice Coltrane and her children in the wake of the death of her husband, famed jazz magician John Coltrane.
Description
The 16mm color film print is a short documentary made for a segment of National Education Television's Black Journal television program. The segment focuses on the life of Alice Coltrane and her children in the wake of the death of her husband, famed jazz magician John Coltrane. This film was shot sometime during 1970; three years after the death of John Coltrane.
This film opens with a collage of photos of jazz musician John Coltrane with a voice-over of a male narrator communicating the musical genius and personal demeanor of the renowned music artist. The voice-over ends with an open-ended statement on John Coltrane's family; leading into an interview with his wife, Alice Coltrane. Alice Coltrane discusses the influence her late husband has had on her life, both musically and spiritually. She speaks of him being a spiritual person, although not tied to one organized religion, his vegetarian diet, and the how he carved time out of his days to meditate. There is footage of their children playing in the yard and walking with their mother. Alice plays the harp and talks about how her music is a manifestation of her spirituality. She discusses her musical career and how she balances that with being a mother and paying tribute to her late husband, but also not wanting to be defined as an extension of John Coltrane's music. Instead, when she finds herself playing some of the music he wrote, she sees herself as sharing in what he produced throughout his career. Footage of her playing the piano at a small jazz concert with a few other musicians plays for two minutes. In the final minutes of the segment, Alice Coltrane explains her relationship with a higher power and the personal enlightenment she has felt and gained through meditation. The film ends with a dolly-out/zoom-out long shot of Alice Coltrane and her children waving from their home.
Alice Coltrane 16mm documentary 1970 (Black Journal) rare
The segment focuses on the life of Alice Coltrane and her children in the wake of the death of her husband, famed jazz musician John Coltrane. This film was shot sometime during 1970; three years after the death of John Coltrane.
The 16mm color film print is a short documentary made for a segment of National Education Television's Black Journal television program.
This film opens with a collage of photos of jazz musician John Coltrane with a voice-over of a male narrator communicating the musical genius and personal demeanor of the renowned music artist. The voice-over ends with an open-ended statement on John Coltrane's family; leading into an interview with his wife, Alice Coltrane. Alice Coltrane discusses the influence her late husband has had on her life, both musically and spiritually.
She speaks of him being a spiritual person, although not tied to one organized religion, his vegetarian diet, and how he carved time out of his days to meditate.
There is footage of their children playing in the yard and walking with their mother. Alice plays the harp and talks about how her music is a manifestation of her spirituality. She discusses her musical career and how she balances that with being a mother and paying tribute to her late husband, but also not wanting to be defined as an extension of John Coltrane's music. Instead, when she finds herself playing some of the music he wrote, she sees herself as sharing in what he produced throughout his career. Footage of her playing the piano at a small jazz concert with a few other musicians plays for two minutes.
In the final minutes of the segment, Alice Coltrane explains her relationship with a higher power and the personal enlightenment she has felt and gained through meditation. The film ends with a dolly-out/zoom-out long shot of Alice Coltrane and her children waving from their home:
CREDIT:
Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Pearl Bowser
Alice Coltrane Interview & Performance w/ Marian McPartland - 1981 | bernie's bootlegs
On this episode of Piano Jazz, pianist and composer Alice Coltrane shimmers on a set of her original tunes and honors the legacy of her husband, saxophonist John Coltrane:
She also duets with host Marian McPartland in Trane's "Giant Steps" and "Miles' Mode."
"I remember her working at Birdland back before she and John were married," McPartland says. "I enjoyed playing his tunes with her: 'Giant Steps' and also 'Miles' Mode,' which is a very good tune."
Coltrane opens the program with two of her compositions: "Transfiguration" and "Prema (Divine Love)." Her skill as a harpist is reflected in the sparkling, light treble notes of her right hand; with the other hand, she brings the broad, suspended chords of her days playing the organ. Coltrane's playing is dense, which made her a natural replacement for John's former pianist, McCoy Tyner.
McPartland performs solo in the ballad "Naima," before the two get into a final duet in another solid John Coltrane tune, "Blues Minor," to close the program.
"This was one of the greatest assemblages to appear on the Carnegie Hall stage."[5]
In 2021, the album was reissued by the Alternative Fox label with the title Live at Carnegie Hall, 1971.[6]
A writer for Pan African Music stated that the album "is a splendid and
ecstatic memento of spiritual jazz with some of its greatest masters.
The splitting horns, wild drums, and clamouring piano are a vivid
display of virtuosity in motion.
Kofi Natambu, editor of and contributor to Sound Projections, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He has written extensively about music as a critic and historian for many publications, including the Black Scholar, Downbeat, Solid Ground: A New World Journal, Detroit Metro Times, KONCH, the Panopticon Review,Black Renaissance Noire, the Village Voice, the City Sun (NYC), the Poetry Project Newsletter (NYC), and the African American Review. He is the author of a biography Malcolm X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: The Melody Never Stops (Past Tents Press) and Intervals (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of Solid Ground: A New World Journal, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology Nostalgia for the Present (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
