Jazz Articles about Alice Coltrane

About Alice Coltrane

Album Review

Alice Coltrane: Carnegie Hall '71

Read "Carnegie Hall '71" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
December 18, 2019

Welcome to the Alice Coltrane Kollectors' Korner. Before entering, discard any nagging ethical concerns about bootlegs and pirated recordings. Call them “unofficial releases" instead. Embrace your inner completist. 2019 has been a good year for members of ACKK. First we had Alice Coltrane Live At The Berkeley Community Theater 1972 (BCT, 2019). The album features Coltrane fronting a percussion-focused, horn-free sextet on harp, acoustic piano and Wurlitzer organ. She performs one of her own tunes ("Journey In ...

Album Review

Alice Coltrane: Live At The Berkeley Community Theater 1972

Read "Live At The Berkeley Community Theater 1972" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
June 11, 2019

Conventional belief holds that Alice Coltrane was the dreamy, mellifluous partner in John Coltrane's late period, out-there sonic explorations. The truth is otherwise, as attentive listening to the recordings the two Coltranes made together in 1966 and 1967 demonstrates. The misapprehension stems from the gentler albums Alice made for Impulse in the first few years following her husband's passing. A Monastic Trio (1968), Huntington Ashram Monastery (1969), Ptah, The El Daoud (1970), Journey In Satchidananda (1971) and World Galaxy (1972) ...

Album Review

Alice Coltrane: Spiritual Eternal: The Complete Warner Bros Studio Recordings

Read "Spiritual Eternal: The Complete Warner Bros Studio Recordings" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
November 1, 2018

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 ...

Live Review

The Music Of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda at Fringearts

by Victor L. Schermer
October 13, 2018

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 ...

Album Review

Alice Coltrane: Huntington Ashram Monastery / World Galaxy

Read "Huntington Ashram Monastery / World Galaxy" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
December 18, 2012

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 ...

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Album Review

McCoy Tyner: McCoy Tyner: Extensions

Read "McCoy Tyner: Extensions" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
December 13, 2011

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 ...

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Mix Tape

Alice Coltrane's Divine Ferocity

by Lawrence Peryer
October 27, 2011

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 ...