Jazz Articles about Alice Coltrane

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Alice Coltrane: The Flowering of Astral Jazz

by Chris May
October 27, 2011

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 song forms ...

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Alice Coltrane Quartet Triumphs at NJPAC

by Joel Levin
November 9, 2006

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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Alice Coltrane: The Impulse Story

by Chris May
July 20, 2006

Alice Coltrane has always had a raw deal from the jazz world. Either patronised or dismissed out of hand, she's suffered the double whammy of one, being a woman in what (until very recently) was overwhelmingly a man's world, and two, being John Coltrane's widow--and therefore, by some strange logic, not a serious artist in her own right. At the same time Coltrane has made massive contributions to the preservation and development of her husband's work, she has also maintained ...

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Alice Coltrane: Translinear Light

by Chris May
November 21, 2004

To say that we've been waiting 26 years, since her last commercial release, Transfiguration, for Alice Coltrane to return to the serene “Eastern" astral jazz which she and Pharoah Sanders developed in the late '60s, is not entirely accurate. That would imply the expectation that such a return would, one day, be made--and since Coltrane withdrew from the jazz world in 1980 to devote herself to spiritual pursuits, her re-emergence seemed to grow less likely with every passing year.

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Alice Coltrane: Translinear Light

by John Kelman
November 2, 2004

At its best, music is a reflection of who we are, where we've been and where we're going. It transcends classification and, instead, becomes something personal, a powerful force that paints a clear and honest picture of the spirit of the performer. While some artists are concerned with the mechanics of music, the logic of how notes and rhythms fit together in new and intriguing ways--and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that--others view music as more of a conduit, a ...

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John Coltrane: The Olatunji Concert: The Last Live Recording

by Colin Fleming
July 12, 2004

Composed almost entirely of violently shifting textures and a commitment to dissonance that all but blasphemes melody and musical forms, this document of John Coltrane's last recorded concert from April '67 is decidedly horrific, threatening, and appropriately staggering. Having forsaken his famous “sheets of sound" for a new, overly propulsive medium in the mid-sixties, Coltrane's last phase was nearly anti-jazz or, if one wants, almost anti-music. Yet on this recording it is Pharoah Sanders who truly has his ...

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In the Spirit: Alice Coltrane

by Kurt Gottschalk
March 16, 2004

Alice Coltrane walked out onstage, joining an ensemble led by her son Ravi on a recent and historic night at Joe's Pub. The bassist Darryl Hall played an immediately recognizable four-note line and the group (also featuring drummer E.J. Strickland) launched into the only reasonable song they could have chosen for the evening, if one that many in the packed room might well have thought would be too much to ask for. Meanwhile, a continent away stands a church that ...