"SUPREME" LOVE: ALICE COLTRANE GETS YEARLONG TRIBUTE

The life and legacy of late jazz pioneer Alice Coltrane will be celebrated with The Year of Alice, a series of special events and archival releases in partnership with Impulse! Records, the Detroit Jazz Festival, UCLA's Hammer Museum and Alonzo King LINES Ballet, among others.

Announced today (2/22) at New York's Birdland, where Alice first met her late husband and fellow jazz icon John in 1963, the campaign gets underway with Impulse!'s 3/22 release of The Carnegie Hall Concert, originally put out in truncated form by Hi Hat in 2018. Recorded on 2/21/71, the show finds Coltrane backed by saxophonists Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp on material such as John's "Africa" and two songs from her own legendary solo LP Journey in Satchidananda. UMe/Verve is also planning a June re-release for Coltrane's 1968 solo debut A Monastic Trio, while Verve will release a third, as-yet-unannounced project in time for the holidays.

Meanwhile, Coltrane's daughter Michelle is teaming with harpist Brandee Younger for An Oral History of Alice Coltrane, which they will stage over the next year in venues such as the Center for Women's History at the New York Historical Society, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Oberlin University and the University of Michigan. Younger is also being lent the original harp John purchased for Alice shortly before his 1967 death, and on which she recorded her early solo work. The instrument has been completely restored by Chicago-based instrument manufacturer Lyon & Healy.

In further performance news, the Detroit Jazz Festival will open their 2024 season with an Alice-focused concert during Labor Day weekend, which will be curated by Alice and John's son Ravi and include some of his "closest musical associates." Further details will be announced in April, and similar Ravi-curated celebrations are in the works for New York and Los Angeles in 2025.

A new piece by Ravi inspired by Alice will be one of two world premiere dance works performed by San Francisco's Alonzo King LINES Ballet company during its 2024-2025 season, with the other set to music from Journey in Satchidananda. UCLA's Hammer Museum will also launch a multimedia, Alice-inspired exhibit in early 2025.

Alice and John Coltrane

In tandem with ongoing programming at its Dix Hills, Long Island location, The John & Alice Coltrane Home will present its first events slate in Brooklyn at the nonprofit ShapeShifter Plus, in partnership the School For Improvisational Music. The series will kick off this spring with a Ravi-hosted listening party for Alice's 1978 live album Transfiguration, her last major release before devoting herself to spiritual practice for the next 25 years. She returned to secular music with 2004's Translinear Light, which wound up being her final studio album before her death in 2007 at the age of 69.

Lastly, Coltrane's 1977 devotional text Monument Eternal will be re-released in the near future, while a previously unreleased literary work, Endless Wisdom III, will also be made available.

"Alice was ahead of her time: one of the first people to move outside the mainstream, and certainly one of the first female, black, American jazz musicians to record her own music in her own studio, and to release music on her own terms," said Ravi. "There is something to be said about timing. It can take a moment for people to recognize where the energies are, where the weight is. But now people across all generations are finding their way to Alice's music in a myriad of different ways. It's hard to pinpoint what makes her music so powerful, but there's something in her spirit, in her intention, that is very clear. People can feel that immediately."

Added Michelle, "My mother engaged herself in the spiritual process known as God-realization. Her life on earth consolidated artistic expression, spiritual principles and charitable giving. She emphasized selfless service that uplifted the giver as well as recipients of the giving. She understood well the relevance of all life in terms of universal consciousness." Talk about A Love Supreme!