Composer of the Week: John and Alice Coltrane

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Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: John and Alice Coltrane: Eternal Sounds

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Eternal Sounds

John and Alice Coltrane

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, John and Alice Coltrane, Eternal Sounds

Kate Molleson and Kevin Le Gendre look at Alice’s musical and spiritual homecoming.

Kate Molleson and Kevin Le Gendre explore the lives and music of revolutionary jazz power couple John and Alice Coltrane. Today - Alice finds her musical and spiritual home.

Kate Molleson and Kevin Le Gendre look at Alice Coltrane’s musical and spiritual homecoming.

Coltrane is a name that you’re likely to have heard, even if you know very little about jazz. More than half a century after his death, saxophonist and composer John Coltrane is hailed as a giant of American cultural history, and one of 20th-century music’s greatest visionaries. But he’s not the only Coltrane. His wife, Alice, was an accomplished keyboardist and harpist who made revolutionary music in her own right, and whose contribution to John’s late output has not always been fully recognised. As soulmates and fellow seekers in sound, John and Alice both transcended cultural and genre boundaries, helping to pioneer avant-garde and spiritual jazz. But following John’s premature death in 1967, Alice began her solo career and would take forward their journey of creative and religious expansion. All this week, Kate Molleson is joined by journalist and broadcaster Kevin Le Gendre to dive into the lives and music of these monumental figures, and explore their contributions to the jazz world and beyond.

Today, divine instruction reveals Alice’s new life purpose. Kate and Kevin discuss her retreat from the music profession, and the life she created for herself at Sai Anantam Ashram in California. In the privacy of her community, she made cassette recordings of original devotional music, which were almost lost to time. But now, a new generation of listeners are discovering the rich spectrum of her work.

Music featured:
Spiritual Eternal (from Eternity)
Sivaya (from Transcendence)
Going Home (from Lord of Lords)
Krishna Krishna (from Turiya Sings)
Translinear Light (from Translinear Light)
Rama rama (from The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda)
Govinda Jai Jai (from Radha-Krsna Nama Sankirtana)


Produced by Amelia Parker for BBC Audio Wales and West

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Kate Molleson and Kevin Le Gendre assess the lives and music of John and Alice Coltrane.

Kate Molleson and Kevin Le Gendre explore the lives and music of  jazz power couple John and Alice Coltrane and explore their contributions to the jazz world and beyond.

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John and Alice Coltrane

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