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***One of the rare female instrumentalists in jazz, Alice Coltrane studied classical music from the age of seven, and jazz with Bud Powell; she gained early experience in church groups and in the jazz ensembles of Kenny Burrell, Johnny Griffin, Lucky Thompson, and Yusef Lateef. By most accounts, she was a fine bebop pianist in her early years. In 1966, she replaced pianist McCoy Tyner in her husband John Coltrane's group. Coltrane's work became a spiritual wellspring for her, but she surely developed her own style on piano, organ, harp, and later, Indian instruments such as the tamboura. Chris Kelsey in All Music Guide admires the "rhythmically ambiguous arpeggios and pulsing thickness of texture" of her playing on Coltrane's Live at the Village Vanguard Again and Concert in Japan. After Coltrane's death in 1967, Alice began recording under her own name for Impulse!, leading groups that included at various times saxophonists Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, Joe Henderson, Frank Lowe, and Carlos Ward, double bass players Cecil McBee and Jimmy Garrison, and drummers Rashied Ali, Ben Riley, and Roy Haynes. In the mid-70s she moved from Impulse! to Warner Bros., for whom she recorded some of her most spiritual and adventurous music ever. Deeply infused with Hindu religious music, whole sides of her albums were devoted to arrangements of religious chants. Transfiguration was recorded live at UCLA in 1978, during a time when she briefly set aside the Hare Krishna choirs and exotic instruments in favor of the trio format of her early period, revisiting with Reggie Workman on bass and Roy Haynes on drums several of her own tunes as well as her late husband's way-out opus "Leo." This performance was deeply spiritual, but definitely jazz. A string section was later overdubbed on the nine-minute "Prema" which included: violinists Noel Pointer, Murray Adler, Sherwyn Hirbod, Michelle Sita Coltrane, and Jay Rosen; Pamela Goldsmith and Janice Ford on violas; Ray Kelly and Christina King on cellos. Originally released as a double-LP, Sepia-Tone inaugurates the label with this historic recording on CD for the first time ever, newly re-mastered and released as a double-disc package with brief new notes from Alice herself. - 83-minute 2xCD at a special price. Never before on CD
- Recorded live at UCLA, April 16, 1978, with Reggie Workman and Roy Haynes, a one-time-only return to Coltrane's early period trio style
- Her last official album (except for self-released cassettes of devotional music); originally released by Warner Bros. in 1978
- Coming soon: reissues of two other WB-era Alice Coltrane treasures-- Transcendence and Eternity
30-second RealAudio excerpts: Transfiguration
One for the Father
Prema
Affinity
Krishnaya
Leo, Part One
Leo, Part Two |
