Alice Coltrane R.I.P - Queen of Cosmic Music is Dead

DominoDub

More Sad news ..another great has passed on. I was just playing her the other day. She has gone to play with John in the Interstellar Space !

http://home.nestor.minsk.by/jazz/news/2007/01/1406.html

Setun

Sad news indeed. I can just picture her album covers, quite eccentric! What was her best record do you think?

DominoDub

As Sampler try - Astral Meditations

Compilation of her early Impulse records.

With tracks extracted from
"A Monastic Trio",
"Alice Coltrane With Strings",
"Ptah, The El daoud",
"Universal Consciousness" &
"Journey In Satchidananda" from Alice,

"Infinity" from John Coltrane
"Cosmic Music" from John & Alice.

This a good tribute from Pitchfork

Universal Mother
A Tribute to Alice Coltrane
Story by Mark Richardson

For a lot of people the spiritual smorgasbord of the late 1960s was just a phase, something you immersed yourself in when on the cusp of adulthood-- often shortly after first trying drugs for the first time-- and then forgot about once you got a little older and braced yourself for compromise. At which point, perhaps, you moved out to the suburbs to raise a family and, if that god-sized hole still loomed, maybe found your way back to the church of your baptism. Then there was the former Alice McLeod, later known as Alice Coltrane, a musician born and raised in Detroit who died on January 12, 2007. She walked it like she talked it.

The changes in Alice Coltrane's highly variable music during her remarkable run of solo records closely paralleled those in her spiritual development. But all along, her music was concerned with the big questions: birth, death, meaning, purpose, the nature of the cosmos; you got the sense that music was for her foremost a tool for uncovering and expressing universal truths. Her religious interests certainly alienated many of her potential fans, and also caused her music to fall out of fashion from time to time. But she seemed like the sort of person who wasn't bothered by such things.

Still, for all the mystical associations she inspires, it's important to remember that Alice Coltrane was grounded in the jazz tradition. She was raised playing organ, studied piano with Bud Powell in Paris, and made her first connection with her eventual husband John Coltrane when he watched her at Birdland playing vibraphone in a four-handed duet with Terry Gibbs (she was touring as Gibbs' pianist). After John's death, she existed for a time under his shadow, playing with musicians that either worked with or were heavily influenced by him. But as time went on, her work became less tethered to the milieu of John Coltrane, and she pursued a path down which she must have known almost no one would follow. As the 70s wore on and she became increasingly interested in incorporating ritualistic chants in her music, her profile lowered and then, by her choice, she stepped away for a time. She returned finally in 2004 with the (again) underappreciated Translinear Light and played several well-received shows, and even had a few more on the calendar at the time of her passing.

Jazz purists gave Alice Coltrane a rough time through the years, but she's always had serious appeal to music fans who don't necessarily follow the genre closely. And it's safe to say that her music has never sounded better than it does right now, at this moment, a couple of days after her sad and untimely death. I have to think it comes over the way she probably always knew it would: timeless, relevant, reaching back a thousand years to look forward another thousand. Here are a few amazing records for the curious wondering what she's all about:

Ptah, the El Daoud (Impulse!; 1970)
Overlooked for years, this is now second to the below Journey as an introductory work. Coltrane is tremendously versatile on this record, at some points hunkering down in gauzy mysticism while elsewhere concentrating on logical, disciplined soloing. Echoes of her grounding in post-bop jazz are still present, though less so than on her 1968 debut A Monastic Trio. The eight-minute "Turiya and Ramakrishna" runs the gamut and contains some of her greatest piano playing on record, as she moves from the tough blues of the main theme to a soaring, impressionistic, and, yes, harp-like flurry of notes that seem to hang suspended in space.

Journey in Satchidananda (Impulse!; 1970)
This is the one that hooks you. Everything is laid out in the first few seconds of "Journey in Satchidananda"-- the commanding, simple bassline, the buzzing tambura drone, and Alice's glorious harp, which sounds in her hands like the instrument of angels it was always reputed to be. I once thought of this album as an expansion upon my favorite John Coltrane moment, the composition "India" that he played in 1961 at the Village Vanguard, but really, it sits in its own space. Pharoah Sanders on soprano sax draws from the intensity he'd been riding since the mid-1960s, but the sense here is less a furious search than a deserved arrival conveying a vibe of expansive, inclusive peace.

Universal Consciousness (Impulse!; 1971)
Strings and organ become the focus as Coltrane's music moves a bit further out. Ornette Coleman transcribed Coltrane's arrangements for the string quartet, which on the title track are shrieking and dissonant (incredible interplay with Jack DeJohnette's drums) but become an even, tempered drone on "Hare Krishna". The closing duet with Rashied Ali, on which Coltrane alternates between harp and organ, is almost frightening in its meditative focus.

World Galaxy (Impulse!; 1971)
Even more strings-- now 16 pieces-- as she records two of her husband's signature tunes but remakes both in her own image. This version of "A Love Supreme" features spoken words by Sri Swami Satchidananda-- her guru at the time and the man whose chanting opened Woodstock-- over an impossibly lush string/harp/oud/percussion backing. But once his voice gives way Alice bangs out the refrain on organ and the rhythm section of Reggie Workman and Ben Riley lock into a pumping funk groove. "My Favorite Things" is all over the place-- alternately spacey, intense, scary, and finally innocent and touching. The three "Galaxy" tracks in the record's middle are sweeping orchestral pieces that speak to Coltrane's compositional acumen.

Lord of Lords (Impulse!; 1972)
Her final album for Impulse! took her orchestral leanings to their logical conclusion on an excerpt from Stravinsky's "Firebird". Her arrangement starts out soaking in a pit of blackness and then turns itself inside out as she switches organ for harp. The closing take on the spiritual "Going Home" begins tender with just a few plucked notes on the harp and then acquires a stately grandeur, sweeping and dramatic but undercut with dignity. It's the sound of someone creating her own weird and beautiful world.

John

She sounds really interesting, I must check out some of her albums (I bought my first John Coltrane LP today, A Love Supreme of course).