Alice Coltrane

As shown above, I now have five of Alice Coltrane’s first six solo albums on CD, a pair of them – Huntington Ashram Monastery (1969) and World Galaxy (1972) – bundled together as a ‘twofer’. This disc was the first of the four I bought, acquired on a rare visit to the HMV in Cribbs Causeway. Not much later, in early 2020, I picked up Ptah, the El Daoud (1970) and Journey in Satchidananda (1971) at Spillers Records in Cardiff. While those were all inexpensive reissues, her debut album A Monastic Trio wasn’t so easy to find at a bargain price. At length I gave up trying and handed over £15 for a used copy from a seller on Discogs: it arrived last week.

I could have spent just over twice as much to get a new vinyl copy – but then I’d have missed out on the extra three tracks included on the CD; with a further eighteen and a half minutes of fascinating and beautiful music beween them. The booklet notes include excerpts from an interview with Coltrane, in which she explains, among other things, her dissatisfaction with ‘jazz’ as a descriptor for what she was doing; and how she considered the album to be a first continuation of her late husband’s work. For all that, I find I enjoy her records more than those by her esteemed spouse. This is serious music without, I think, being self-important; and spritual without being dogmatic. An example track: ‘Gospel Trane’.