The arc of Alice Coltrane’s life traces a remarkable trajectory, from her roots as a
Detroit-bred bebop pianist named Alice McLeod to her emergence as a hero of the jazz avant-
garde in the late 1960s and her transformation into a religious teacher and mystic grounded in Hinduism and Eastern philosophy.
But the central episode in her life was the time spent in the orbit of John Coltrane from 1963 until he died in 1967. A revolutionary saxophonist, he pioneered an intense, incantatory style that entered the DNA of jazz before exploring expressionistic free jazz. The partnership changed everything for Alice Coltrane: her personal life, her musical style, her spirituality, her destiny.
“Once I heard his sound, it just stayed in my mind and consciousness,” she says. “It was so strong I felt I knew him. There was more than music; there was something greater, something beyond. It was transcendental.”
Alice Coltrane led an 80th birthday tribute to her husband in Ann Arbor, Mich., on Saturday, the date of his birth. Coltrane, 69, is performing just three concerts this fall. She has rarely played in public in the past 30 years, focusing instead on spiritual pursuits, including ministering to a small ashram, a religious community she began in 1975.
The band includes her 41-year-old son, Ravi Coltrane, a compelling saxophonist; and two legends whose histories with the Coltrane family date back to the 1960s: bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Roy Haynes.
The concerts follow Alice Coltrane’s 2004 album, “Translinear Light” (Impulse), her first commercial recording in years.
The CD reveals that her signature piano style remains intact: rhapsodic, harp-like arpeggios blend into mysterious modal harmonies played with a dark tone and deep bass notes that seem rooted in Middle Earth.
Ravi Coltrane, the catalyst for reviving his mother’s career, says she’s not about to go on the road, but he has been gratified by how much she is enjoying reconnecting with her musical past. She has even started writing music again, he says, and he recently helped her transfer string parts to a computer notation program.
Another CD is in the works.
“We sat up for hours working on this stuff,” he says from his New York home. “It was a really nice feeling to see that in her because I remember so much of that growing up, seeing her work hour after hour on a musical project.”
Alice Coltrane sits in the cozy office of Jowcol Music, command central for the John Coltrane estate, including a lucrative publishing and licensing business, a small educational foundation and other concerns. The office is about 10 minutes from her home in upscale Woodland Hills, where the family owns three homes side by side. Living there are daughter Michelle, a vocalist (a product of Coltrane’s first marriage to singer Kenny Hagood), and son Oran, a saxophonist and guitarist. Another son, John Jr., died in a car accident in 1982.
Coltrane is rail-thin with smooth skin, high cheekbones and a striking mane of straight black hair. She has a beatific glow, a soft rasp in her voice and a deliberate tempo to her speech. She started studying classical piano at age 7, developing an affinity for Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Chopin and Debussy. “I still like to get out my old books and open up some nice composition I played over the years,” she says.
Bassist Ernie Farrow, her half-brother, introduced her to jazz and began taking her on gigs when she was a teenager. Another mentor was pianist and vibist Terry Pollard, who gave Coltrane her first piano.
Pollard would gain acclaim while working with vibist Terry Gibbs, who later hired Coltrane out of Detroit in 1962.
Coltrane made her first LPs with Gibbs, who recalls her as a dynamic improviser and a shy, dignified woman. It was Gibbs who introduced her to John Coltrane, when their groups shared a bill at Birdland in New York in 1963.
“It was wonderful to watch them fall in love,” he says. “You could see a glow. He saw the prettiness in her soul.” These were heady days for John Coltrane, whose legendary quartet was in full cry. He was practicing, composing and recording at a manic pace, and Alice Coltrane says it was not unusual for him to arrive at home after a job at 3 a.m. and immediately take out his horn and practice in the garage.
She willingly gave up her career to raise a family and was shocked when he asked her to join his band in late 1965.
His music was morphing into its final stage, leaving behind a steady pulse and structural guideposts in favor of a tidal churn of rhythm and free-form improvisation; the music was a cathartic ritual.
Under his guidance, Alice Coltrane’s playing underwent a profound metamorphosis. He encouraged her to tackle the entire breadth of the keyboard and pushed her to take up the harp. He introduced her to the Eastern sounds that defined the albums she made on her own after his death, helping create a celestial niche within the avant-garde.
John Coltrane’s interest in Eastern religions and meditation had a profound impact. Meditation brought her peace and clarity, she says. She had visions in which she says her late husband or God talked to her.
She became a disciple of
Swami Satchidananda, an influential guru. She says God told her to move to California.
“I was asked to wear a white dress and was told what time to be ready,” she says. “The Lord said, ‘I’ll give you an initiation mantra and your name.’ I stood up facing east. All of a sudden, the coloring of my white dress turned to saffron color as if the color was poured into the clothing. It was so cosmic and divine.”
Such mysticism might strike some as incongruous with the musical and business sides of her life, but son Ravi sees no divisions: “Maybe it’s hard for some to see these things working together as one force, but to me, that’s Alice Coltrane.”
