Adeus, Alice

Jazz titan Alice Coltrane died in Los Angeles on Friday, January 12, the Los Angeles Times reports. She was 69 years old and suffered from respiratory failure.

Born Alice McLeod in Detroit in 1937, the pianist/harpist/organist started studying music as a child. She was an accomplished performer in her own right long before she met husband John Coltrane in 1963. The pair was married in 1965 and Alice joined John's band, replacing pianist McCoy Tyner.

John Coltrane died in 1967, and Alice continued on as a bandleader, performing with such musicians as Pharoah Sanders, Joe Henderson, and Rashied Ali. She released several groundbreaking albums, including A Monastic Trio, Ptah the El Daoud, Universal Consciousness, and the spectacular Journey in Satchidananda, before embarking on a long retirement from recording and public performance in 1978.

Alice spent much of the following decades focused on raising her children, overseeing John Coltrane's estate, and engaging in spiritual pursuits. A devoted follower of Hinduism, Alice founded an ashram in the Los Angeles area in the mid-1970s.

In 2004, Alice Coltrane released Translinear Light, her first album in 26 years. She supported it with a smattering of performances, the last of which occurred in November of 2006. At the time of her death, Alice was working on a new album, Sacred Language of Ascension, which combined music with religious chants.


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