Alice Coltrane

1937-2007

Musician, spiritual leader

Though perhaps best known as the wife and bandmate of the saxophone great John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane was a major jazz artist in her own right. One of the first female instrumentalists to emerge in the male-dominated jazz world of the 1950s and 1960s, Coltrane soon became known for her innovative incorporation of harp scales and other unusual sounds, as well as for the strong spiritual or mystical element present in almost all her work. A skilled businessperson, she won widespread praise for her astute management of her husband's financial and artistic assets following his death in 1967. Much of her later life was devoted to the ashram, or Hindu study center, she founded near her home in Woodland Hills, California, outside Los Angeles.

The daughter of Solon and Anne McLeod, Coltrane was born Alice McLeod in Detroit, Michigan, on August 27, 1937. Music filled the McLeods' working-class household. Anne McLeod played piano and sang in her church choir, and Alice's elder half-brother, Ernie Farrow, was a talented bass player who began playing jazz professionally in the late 1940s. Alice herself began piano lessons at the age of seven, studying Beethoven and other classical composers as well as hymns and gospel spirituals. Before she was in her teens, she was playing these professionally at church functions and social gatherings. By the time she entered high school, however, she was devoting much of her time to jazz. Under the influence of her brother Ernie, she was drawn particularly to bebop, a fast-paced, harmonically intricate style that began to dominate jazz in the late 1940s.

Long a center of the jazz world, Detroit enthusiastically embraced the new style. Local clubs, notably the famous Blue Bird Inn, and radio programs encouraged young musicians throughout the city to follow in the footsteps of bebop's leading practitioners, including the saxophonist Charlie Parker, the trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and the pianist Bud Powell. It was in this exciting atmosphere that Alice began appearing at jazz clubs, often accompanied by her brother on bass. Following graduation from high school, she was offered a scholarship to the Detroit Institute of Technology, but turned it down to travel to Paris, where she studied with Powell and married vocalist Kenny (Pancho) Hagood, with whom she had a daughter. The union would end in divorce in 1965.

Met John Coltrane

After a brief return to Detroit, where she resumed playing gigs with her brother, Alice moved to New York City in 1962. While playing with vibraphonist Terry Gibbs at Birdland, another famous club, shortly after her arrival, she met John Coltrane for the first time. The two were soon living together, though they would not marry until the finalization of Alice's divorce from Hagood in 1965. By all accounts, the relationship was a close one, with children born in 1964 (John Jr., who died in a car accident in 1982), 1965 (Ravi), and 1967 (Oran). Eleven years her senior, John introduced Alice to several Eastern religious traditions, notably the ancient Hindu scriptures known as the Vedas, which would exert a profound influence on much of her later life. In addition to caring for her young children, Alice joined John's band in 1965, replacing McCoy Tyner as pianist. The change coincided with the saxophonist's desire to move further into experimental or avant-garde jazz, with the ultimate goal of expressing through music the spiritual wisdom he had found in the ancient texts. Alice strongly supported this change and embraced her husband's related suggestion to take up the harp, a common instrument in Eastern religion but then almost unknown in the context of jazz. Among the albums she recorded with her husband are Live in Japan (recorded in 1966 and released in 1973); Expression (1967), his last studio album; and The Olatunji Concert (recorded in 1967 and released in 2001), his last live recording.

John Coltrane's death from liver cancer in 1967 left his widow with four young children and the responsibility, as the executor of his estate, for all of his financial and artistic assets, most of which were organized under a holding company he had established, Jowcol Music. Alice Coltrane's astute handling of these complex business arrangements was widely admired, and she would run Jowcol Music profitably until her death forty years later. Despite these demands on her time, she continued to record music, releasing a series of albums under her own name between 1968 and 1978. Such highly regarded recordings as A Monastic Trio (1968), Ptah the El Daoud (1970), and Universal Consciousness (1971) were an innovative, often trancelike mixture of African and Asian rhythms and instrumentation.

Evident in all was Coltrane's increasing dedication to spiritual matters. Sacred chants from the Hindu tradition, for example, were prominently featured. Coltrane, who took a vow of celibacy for religious reasons after her husband's death, made the first of several trips to India in the early 1970s, where she studied with several well-known gurus, or mystical teachers, including Swami Satchidananda and Sathya Sai Baba. After gaining the rank of teacher herself, she adopted the name of Turiyasangitananda, sometimes shortened to Turiya.

Founded Religious Institute

Following the release of Transfiguration, a live album, in 1978, Coltrane ceased recording commercially for more than twenty-five years. Though she continued to record music throughout that period, the results were intended only for use in the religious observances that occupied an increasing proportion of her time. In 1975 she founded a religious institute in San Francisco, the Vedanta Center, devoted to the mystical traditions of Hinduism. Eight years later she moved the center to a large property in Agoura Hills, California, outside Los Angeles, and expanded it into the Sai Anantam Ashram, with residential facilities for several dozen full-time students. In addition to overseeing every aspect of the transfer and expansion, Coltrane continued to manage her late husband's estate and the John Coltrane Foundation, a charitable organization she founded that began providing scholarships to music students in 2004.

At a Glance …

Born Alice McLeod on August 27, 1937, in Detroit, MI; died on January 12, 2007, in West Hills, CA; daughter of Solon and Anne McLeod; married Kenny (Pancho) Hagood (a singer), late 1950s (divorced 1965); married John Coltrane (a saxophonist), 1965 (died July 17, 1967); children: Michelle (with Hagood), John Jr. (died 1982), Ravi, Oran; used the name Turiyasangitananda, or variations thereof, in private and religious contexts. Education: Intensive study with several religious teachers, notably Swami Satchidananda and Sathya Sai Baba.

Career: Professional pianist, late 1940s-2007; member of saxophonist John Coltrane's quintet, 1965-67; solo recording artist, 1968-78 and 2004-07; Jowcol Music, director, 1967-2007; Vedanta Center, San Francisco (which later became the Sai Anantam Ashram, Agoura Hills, CA), founder and director, 1975-2007.

Awards: Guest of honor at White House, 1993.

That year also saw the triumphant resumption of her commercial recording career with the release of Translinear Light. Featuring Coltrane on piano, organ, and synthesizer, Translinear Light included the work of several highly regarded musicians, including her son Ravi, an accomplished saxophonist and the album's producer; the drummer Jack DeJohnette; and the bassist Charlie Haden. Her other surviving son, Oran, also played saxophone on several tracks. Critics responded enthusiastically to the album's mixture of traditional jazz rhythms, gospel melodies, and sacred Hindu chants, with Thom Jurek of allmusicguide.com calling it a "defining, aesthetically brilliant statement from a master composer, improviser, and player."

Although Coltrane made only a handful of public appearances in the 1980s and 1990s, these increased somewhat as she worked on Translinear Light and its successor, the posthumously released Sacred Language of Ascension (2007), which added ancient Hebrew chants to what the blogger Jim Harrington, reviewing a 2006 concert, called Coltrane's "musical nutrition for the soul." On January 12, 2007, shortly before Sacred Language of Ascension was due for release, Coltrane died of respiratory failure in West Hills, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. At a memorial concert held several months later in New York, Ravi Coltrane expressed the views of many who had experienced his mother's music and spiritual guidance. "She truly was," he was quoted as saying by the New York Times, "the mother of many."

Selected discography

With the John Coltrane Quintet

Live in Japan, Impulse!, 1966 (released 1973).

Expression, Impulse!, 1967.

Live at the Village Vanguard Again!, Impulse!, 1967.

The Olatunji Concert (live), Impulse!, 1967 (released 2001).

Solo/bandleader

A Monastic Trio, Impulse!, 1968.

Huntington Ashram Monastery, Impulse!, 1969.

Ptah the El Daoud, Impulse!, 1970.

Journey in Satchidananda (live), Impulse!, 1970.

Universal Consciousness, Impulse!, 1971.

World Galaxy, Impulse!, 1971.

Lord of Lords, Impulse!, 1973.

Eternity, Warner Brothers, 1975.

Radha-Krsna Nama Sankirtana, Warner Brothers, 1976.

Transcendence, Sepia Tone, 1977.

Transfiguration (live), Sepia Tone, 1978.

Translinear Light, Impulse!, 2004.

Sacred Language of Ascension (posthumous), Kindred Rhythm, 2007.

Sources

Periodicals

New York Times, January 15, 2007, p. A13; May 19, 2007, p. B7.

Washington Post, October 21, 2006; January 15, 2007, p. B06.

Online

"Alice Coltrane," All about Jazz,http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/musician.php?id=5848 (accessed July 5, 2008).

"Biography," Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda, http://www.alicecoltrane.org/biography.html (accessed July 5, 2008).

Harrington, Jim, "Alice Coltrane Shows ‘A Love Supreme,’" Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda, November 5, 2006, http://www.alicecoltrane.org/newsReview3SF.html (accessed July 5, 2008).

Jurek, Thom, review of Translinear Light, allmusic, http://www.allmusicguide.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:39fuxqlsldje (accessed July 8, 2008).

—R. Anthony Kugler