Alice Coltrane, Musician and Spiritual Leader, Dies at 69

The wife of John Coltrane was a brilliant musician in her own right. Classically trained on the piano from age 7, Alice MacLeod played all over Detroit growing up. After being taught informally by Bud Powell in Paris, she went to New York in 1962 and met John Coltrane. Soulmates in both life and music, they were married in 1965 and she joined his band shortly thereafter.

In some ways, Alice's arrival in the band was pioneering; other than Nina Simone, there were no other prominent female instrumentalists or composers in jazz. At the time, John Coltrane was reaching the pinnacle of his popularity with what is now known as the "Classic Quartet." Coltrane, pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones had recorded the seminal "A Love Supreme," the year before John and Alice were married. Some perceived her as a jazz equivalent of Yoko Ono.

At the time, Coltrane was exploring the more abstract, freer approaches that became known as avant-garde.

John and Alice used their music to search for higher truths, resulting in a sound that was soul-searching, gospel-tinged and increasingly abstract. Some of the hidden gems in the Coltrane discography are teh 1967 sessions that produced tunes such as "Lord, Help Me to Be Me," "The Sun" and "Stellar Regions."

John also introduced Alice to Hindu and other ancient eastern belief systems, which led her to incorporate chants, orchestration and the meditational hum of the Wurlitzer organ into her music. After John died from liver failure in 1967, Alice continued recording with other avant-garde pioneers Rashied Ali, Pharoah Sanders, and Ornette Coleman. "Universal Consciousness" is a masterwork of the genre. Her most accessible piece from this stage of her career is "Blue Nile," from the otherworldly album "Ptah the El Daoud." Filled with majestic harp and piano rolls and featuring Sanders and Joe Henderson on flute, this is simply one of the most beautiful songs ever made.

Alice stopped performing and focused on her spiritual studies. She changed her name to Turiyasangitananda, Sanskrit for "the highest song of God." In 1983 she founded the Sai Anantam ashram in Agoura Hills, California, where she teaught ancient eastern spiritual texts.

In 2004 came Alice's first commercial release in 26 years, Translinear Light. It was produced by her son Ravi, who was 2 years old when his father died and is now an acclaimed saxophonist in his own right. Son Oran also plays alto on several tracks. With the exception of the fact that she doesn't play harp on any of the 11 tracks, this album is a perfect epitaph, both reaching to the past and creating something new. The album starts with a remake of "Sita Ram" an anthem from "Universal Consciousness," and ends with the traditional Hindu chant Satya Sa Isha. In between she pays homage to her husband in remakes of Crescent and Leo and even offers an updated version of her masterpiece "Blue Nile." But the album's biggest highlight is the beautiful collaborations with Ravi on "Jagadishwar," "The Hymn," and the title track, which can be described as a nine-minute journey through existence.

Her music and her way of life are not for everyone. But Alice Coltrane blessed the world with her talent and dedicated herself to searching for universal truths and living a life of peace and love.