Alice Coltrane (1937 – 2007)
Alice Coltrane was born Alice McLeod in a musical household in Detroit. Around the age of 20 she moved to Paris and studied jazz and classical music. In 1960, she married jazz vocalist Kenny Hagood, but that marriage ended in in divorce. In 1965, she married the great jazz composer and saxophonist John Coltrane.
In early 1966, Alice Coltrane replaced McCoy Tyner as pianist in John Coltrane’s band. They performed together and recorded several albums until his death in 1967. In the years following, Alice Coltrane pioneered a type of “spiritual jazz.” She spent many years associated with an ashram in California, and she integrated her Vedanta studies and Vedic ceremonies into her music. Although her early performances feature her piano playing, she also became one of the jazz world’s few harpists, and the harp figures prominently in her later work.
The mystical and spiritual overtones that might be detected in John Coltrane’s 1965 album A Love Supreme suggest a future direction for Coltrane’s music had he lived beyond 1967. But Alice Coltrane’s innovations very clearly reflect her own sensibility. This is most evident in the posthumous John Coltrane album “Infinity” from 1972. This album consists of tracks that John Coltrane recorded prior to his death, but on top of which Alice Coltrane has layered strings, organ, harp, and alternative percussion, making them very different compositions.
Alice Coltrane’s own album “World Galaxy” (also from 1972) shows a similar sensibility. It includes reinterpretations of two of John Coltrane’s signature works and three new pieces. This album is very early-70s, right down to the cover by psychedelic artist Peter Max. I’ve selected the middle of the five tracks called “Galaxy in Turiya,” which would not ordinarily be classified as jazz.