Jazz And Harmony

Theirs was a brief but intense union -- just five years -- but one that brought three children and altered her life's trajectory. John Coltrane, 11 years older, introduced Alice to Eastern religion, meditation and philosophy. He pushed her to take up the harp, at the time a rare addition to the jazz canon. That instrument, along with her ecclesiastical explorations and noodling with North African and Indian instrumentation, formed the musical basis of her solo albums in the late '60s and early '70s: "Journey in Satchidananda," the staple of many a yoga class; "Ptah the El Daoud"; "World Galaxy"; and "Universal Consciousness."

Her latest, critically acclaimed album, "Translinear Light," released in 2004 after a 26-year absence from the mainstream jazz scene, looks both backward and forward, traveling between John's compositions to the gospel hymns of her Christian childhood to the Hindu hymns of her own Vedantic-based beliefs. She's now at work on "Sacred Language of Ascension," scheduled for release early next year, an album that incorporates Hebrew devotional chants, Vedic culture, Coltrane jazz, along with orchestral and congregational church music.

"She's got an incredible strength and direction," says bassist Charlie Haden, who played with John Coltrane, worked with Alice on "Journey in Satchidananda" and "Translinear Light," and will be performing with her tomorrow. "She's always exploring and discovering. . . . She's an incredible musician."

When her one great love died in 1967 of liver cancer after years of alcohol and drug abuse -- Alice manages the jazz legend's estate -- she kept on playing, jamming on the piano, harp and Wurlitzer organ in studio sessions with the likes of Jimmy Garrison and Pharoah Sanders, with Rashied Ali and Archie Shepp, and collaborating with Carlos Santana, Laura Nyro, McCoy Tyner and Jack DeJohnette. Music swirled all around her until 1978, when Alice decided that she'd rather pursue all things spiritual. She spent weeks at a time in India, studying with spiritual masters such as her guru, Sri Swami Satchidananda, and the Indian sage Sri Satya Sai Baba, he of the beatific grin and the splendiferous 'fro.

Ask her about this change in life direction, and she carefully measures her words, her voice a lyrical murmur punctuated by abrupt, staccato bursts:

"This is what we did, [my children's] father and I, this is what we did when we were young," Alice, 69, says of her jazz career, sitting by a burbling stream at the ashram. "We concertized, we were busy and we played in various places and we recorded a lot. I felt that he completed his mission. And I felt that my time had passed on.

"You see where I am today," she continues, gesturing at the Santa Monica Mountains, the lush trees. "I wanted to spend time in spiritual search."

So she stopped making music for secular consumption and began recording spiritual music with members of the ashram's choir. But her second-eldest son, Ravi Coltrane, 41, a talented saxophonist, coaxed her out of retirement, bit by bit, for occasional concerts. Ravi produced and performs on "Translinear Light," five years in the making, and this year cajoled her to perform in four concerts across the country in the 80th year since John's birth. Tomorrow's concert will be her only East Coast appearance.

"The performances for me are really commemorating that Alice wants to get onstage and play a little bit," Ravi says from his home in Brooklyn, N.Y. "All my ideas -- 'C'mon, Ma, we should make a record, let's go in the studio' -- it was me begging her."

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Growing up in Detroit in the aftermath of the Depression, the second-youngest of six children, money was always tight. Her father drove a delivery truck; her mother, a homemaker, didn't truck with childish nonsense. Alice learned about music from her older half brother, Ernie Farrow, a bassist. When Alice was 7, she went knocking on a neighbor's door. The neighbor had a piano; Alice didn't.

"I decided one day that I was going to ask her to teach me," Alice says. She learned the rudiments and moved on to Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky. Classical music grounded her in technique. She composed her first song at 10 and played in church choirs, and then music halls, weddings, funerals, didn't matter. "Music," Alice says, "was just in my heart, somehow."