Firmly established as one of the greatest tenor saxophone players of his generation, he signed an exclusive recording contract with Impulse Records-the brand-new jazz imprint of producer Creed Taylor.Д¬oltraneвЂ™s new deal allowed him the creative control and artistic freedom necessary to push jazzвЂ™s boundaries and imagine new musical vistas. Coltrane was already an accomplished bandleader, releasing a slew of records from Blue Train (1957) to My Favorite Things (1961). He was a sideman for Thelonious Monk and in 1959 appeared on Miles DavisвЂ™ modal masterwork, Kind of Blue. While known to be a junkie early in his career, by 1957 tenor saxophonist John Coltrane had kicked his habit and begun his musical ascent in earnest. One album in particular spurred her creative contemplation: John ColtraneвЂ™s Africa/Brass. Once again immersed in the bustling Detroit scene, McLeod began to contemplate jazz beyond the dizzying array of chord changes, scales, and standards that were fundamental to the bop era. It wasnвЂ™t long before she returned to Detroit as a single mother, moved back in with her parents, and started picking up gigs to support her daughter. In 1960, she gave birth to a daughter, Michelle-the joyousness of which was tempered by HagoodвЂ™s burgeoning heroin habit. The young couple were wed and relocated to Paris in the late вЂ™50s.ДЄlice gigged regularly around Paris, befriending other musicians like fellow pianist Bud Powell. The young McLeod soon became a fixture of the cityвЂ™s jazz scene and found herself involved with Kenneth вЂњPonchoвЂќ Hagood, a scat jazz singer whoвЂ™d recorded with Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis. She formed her own lounge act, performing gospel and R&B-with touches of blues and bebop-around Detroit. BerkmanвЂ™s biography Monument Eternal: The Music of Alice Coltrane, Alice remembers those formative services as вЂњthe gospel experience of her life,вЂќ an instance of devotional music that gave her teenage self вЂњthe experience of unmediated worship at the collective level.вЂќД®ncouraged by her half brother Farrow, Alice continued to pursue music. Olive Baptist ChurchвЂ™s three choirs, and at 16В she was invited to perform with the Lemon Gospel Singers during services at the more ecstatic Church of God in Christ. The McLeods were a musical family-AliceвЂ™s mother, Anna, played in the church choir, her half brother Ernest Farrow was a prominent jazz bassist, and her sister Marilyn went on to be a songwriter at Motown-and Alice took up piano and organ at a young age. It had also gained renown as a bebop hot spot and was home to future jazz players like Cecil McBee, Donald Byrd, Paul Chambers, Milt Jackson, Yusef Lateef, Bennie Maupin, and Elvin Jones. The two World Wars solidified DetroitвЂ™s position as a manufacturing powerhouse and by 1959 it was the industrial center of the country.

The names she adopted demarcate radical shifts in her life and her work, serving effectively as chapter headings in the story of how a bebop pianist from Detroit evolved into one of jazzвЂ™s singular visionaries, ultimately walking away from public performance to become a guru and beacon of enlightenment for others.ДЄlice McLeod was born on August 27, 1937, in Alabama, though her family soon relocated to the rough east side of Detroit. The adventurous nature and spiritual import of her work continues to resonate through New Age, jazz, and experimental electronic music of all stripes.ДЄlice used a number of names throughout her career, and collectively they chart a path of self-realization.

While her late husband John ColtraneвЂ™s discography remains titanic in modern jazz, AliceвЂ™s own albums are equally compelling and mysterious, suggesting a musical form that moves away from jazz and into a unique sonic realm that draws on classical Indian instrumentation, atonal modern orchestration, and homemade religious synth music.

In thisВ centuryвЂљ howeverвЂљ her music has grown in statureвЂљ and one can now hear echoes of her influence everywhereвЂљ from BjГ¶rkвЂ™s juxtaposition of timbres and textures to Joanna NewsomвЂ™s harp playingВ to the twisted astral beats of her great-nephew Stephen Ellison, aka Flying Lotus. A respected yet divisive figure who was scorned by the jazz mainstream for most of her life, Alice Coltrane was one of the most complicated and misunderstood of all 20th-century musicians.

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