The breathtaking music of Alice Coltrane has the power to stop listeners in their tracks and guide them to another realm of consciousness as she masterfully traverses genres of jazz, gospel, bebop, and classical Indian music, collapsing them together in ethereal, harmonic compositions that can drift into a discordant cacophony of sound. Her embrace of the unpredictable and her refusal to limit her musical range has attracted reverence among free jazz aficionados (and ire from classical jazz purists.)
I don’t remember where I was the first time I heard Alice Coltrane (1937–2007); instead I remember how her music made me feel. With gentle plucks of a harpsichord, she whisks listeners away on a musical journey punctuated by the haunting key chords and deep bass notes of her Wurlitzer organ, as a steady accompaniment of strings and percussion flow in and out of her densely packed symphonic scores. It’s a sensation best described by her son Oran Coltrane: “When she put her hand on the keyboard it was like somebody shooting a beam of light through your chest.”
This month, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles debuts a survey of contemporary art inspired by the boundaryless musician and spiritual leader. “Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal,” curated by Erin Christovale, also explores the influences that shaped her unique sound and the artistic reverberations her life continues to stir.
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Read full review at artnews.com
