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Alice Coltrane: Spiritual Eternal: The Complete Warner Bros Studio Recordings
by Chris May
The most arcane albums in Alice Coltrane's catalogue are not, as is widely supposed, the post-Impulse! mid-1970s discs collected on Spiritual Eternal: The Complete Warner Bros Studio Recordings. They are instead a series of cassettes Coltrane released in limited editions on her Avatar label during the 1980s and early 1990s, when she had retired from the public arena and was focusing on devotional music and leading a meditation centre in California. Unlike the Avatar recordings, the three ...
Continue ReadingThe Music Of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda at Fringearts
by Victor L. Schermer
The Sai Anantam Ashram Singers with Rudresh Mahanthappa The Music Of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda October Revolution Festival Fringearts Philadelphia, PA October 7, 2018 Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda (1937 -2007) was the second wife of John Coltrane. Raising a family with him, she was also a fine pianist and replaced McCoy Tyner in Trane's quartet for a short time. Following his death, she experienced an emotional crisis which led her ...
Continue ReadingAlice Coltrane: Huntington Ashram Monastery / World Galaxy
by Chris M. Slawecki
Composer, pianist, keyboard player, harpist and bandleader Alice (McLeod) Coltrane married John Coltrane in 1965. She played in her husband's band until his passing in 1967 but his influence remained strong throughout her music thereafter. Few of her albums reflect this influence more strongly than Huntington Ashram Monastery, recorded in 1969, and World Galaxy, recorded in 1971, here combined as part of the Impulse!/Universal 2-on-1 Impulse! reissue series.Huntington captures a trio date with bassist Ron Carter and drummer ...
Continue ReadingMcCoy Tyner: McCoy Tyner: Extensions
by Chris May
Languishing off-catalogue for many years, McCoy Tyner's Extensions may be the pianist's most unjustly neglected album. Strange days, for not only is the music ineffably vibrant, but Extensions is the only recording ever to feature Tyner alongside pianist and harpist Alice Coltrane, who replaced him in saxophonist John Coltrane's group in 1966. The album has one foot in the echoes of John Coltrane's “classic quartet," of which Tyner was a member from 1960-65, and the other in the astral jazz ...
Continue ReadingAlice Coltrane: The Flowering of Astral Jazz
by Chris May
The launch of Impulse! Records' 2-on-1 reissue series--which packages two original LPs on one CD--includes six key albums from the glorious first flowering of the astral jazz forged by pianist and harpist Alice Coltrane and saxophonist Pharoah Sanders on Impulse! towards the end of the 1960s. The style emerged following saxophonist John Coltrane's passing in 1967, when Alice Coltrane and Sanders--both members of John Coltrane's later groups--repositioned at center stage the African and Indian percussion instruments and ...
Continue ReadingAlice Coltrane's Divine Ferocity
by Lawrence Peryer
Alice Coltrane's death in 2007 did not bring about the critical reassessment her work deserves. Nothing less than a trailblazer in free and spiritual jazz, the pianist and harpist was a deeply sensitive blues player and top-rate composer. Working in the shadow of her husband, saxophonist John Coltrane, through his controversial, late-period work and her erratic recording career later in her own life have not helped her legacy but Alice Coltrane's work is Important with a capital “I." If you ...
Continue ReadingAlice Coltrane Quartet Triumphs at NJPAC
by Joel Levin
Alice Coltrane Quartet New Jersey Performing Arts Center Newark, NJ October 22, 2006
On October 22, Alice and Ravi Coltrane et al. roared into town, captivating a few thousand of their adoring subjects at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.
As for jazz royalty, they don't come more blue-blooded than the widow and son of saxophonist John Coltrane, possibly the most acclaimed, most influential composer/player of the past half century.
The ...
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