
Had The Carnegie Hall Concert been released in 1971 when it was originally commissioned and recorded by Impulse as a double live LP, it would undoubtedly rank among the all-time holy grails of live jazz, no, live music, period. But nothing happens before it’s time, and we are unbelievably fortunate to be graced with the revelation of Coltrane’s performance in the here and now. Left in the vault for decades and only partially bootlegged, The Carnegie Hall Concert documents Alice Coltrane cresting a creative peak which marked the end of a cycle of suffering and a rebirth for her spirit and music. This is more than a live recording, it’s a transfiguration through sound.
By 1971, Alice Coltrane had passed through a crucible of grief and turmoil following the untimely deaths of her husband, John Coltrane, in 1967, and her older half-brother, bassist Ernie Farrow (known for his work with Yusef Lateef) two years later. Suddenly a single mother of four, she threw herself into raising her children and managing the Coltrane estate, tempering grief by recording her first albums as a composer and bandleader, A Monastic Trio (1968), Huntington Ashram Monastery (1969), and Ptah, the El Daoud (1970). Coltrane also deepened the austerity of her own spiritual practices, pushing herself to the limits of mind and body; she would sit for marathon 20 hour meditation sessions, inflict burns on herself that required hospitalization, all the while hallucinating voices from the trees. Following a near-death experience, Coltrane recalled to an interviewer, “I found that whatever questions that I might have had in my mind concerning whatever events in the future or past were answered. I think that it gave me freedom, that it gave me my true independence. The world cannot claim me anymore.”
It was around this time Coltrane first encountered Swami Satchidananda, the yoga guru who delivered the inaugural blessing at Woodstock. From 1970-1972, Coltrane dedicated herself to Satchidananda as both student and benefactor, recording a series of landmark albums informed by her new guru’s counsel. In late 1970 she spent five weeks with Satchidananda in India and Sri Lanka, a trip she credited with motivating her to explore new sonic realms within her music, later telling Essence, “The trip to the East gave me the spiritual motivation to come out more — to do more with my music.”
But that’s not necessarily what the audience was expecting when they ushered into Carnegie Hall on a cold February evening for a benefit supporting the Satchidananda’s Integral Yoga Institute. Sandwiched between sets by fellow Satchidananda devotees Laura Nyro and The Rascals (both of whom Coltrane had played session for), Alice took the stage with a double quartet rolling deep with heavy company: Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp on saxophone, Cecil McBee and Jimmy Garrison on bass, Clifford Jarvis and Ed Blackwell on drums, all augmented by Satchidananda followers on tamboura and harmonium. What followed was one of the most transcendent sets to ever grace the venue.
Winding tendrils of bass unfurl amid a gentle ripple of percussion, slowly winding themselves into the mighty central riff of “Journey in Satchidananda,” Coltrane’s tribute to her guru and the title cut of her watershed album released just a week prior to the gig. McBee and Garrison settle the mantra-like ostinato around the fluttering swing of Jarvis and Blackwell before cascades of arpeggio from Coltrane’s harp instate a shimmering astral bloom while warm currents of flute and sax begin wending their way through the serpentine groove. It’s a subtle and sublime rendering, a testament to Coltrane’s ability as a bandleader to coax delicate restraint from players known primarily for high-energy wailing. Continuing in this mode with another composition from Journey In Satchidnanda, “Shiva Loka” is a river of pure spectral ambience, a Vedic devotional fantasia conjuring dream scenes from the banks of the Ganges, embodying what Coltrane called “the essence of the East,” which she’d encountered during her travels with Satchidananda. Together, the pieces from Journey In Satchidananda serve as a humble offering, a benediction, a shared spiritual breath between group and audience as intimate as a prayer.
Once the offering has been made, however, we’re jolted from the meditative hush as Alice moves to piano and plunges into a full-on fire sermon, with two incendiary extended readings from John Coltrane’s songbook, “Africa” and “Leo.” With these pieces, Alice raises the spirit of her late husband, communing with his presence through sound. “The feeling that I get from playing his music is sort of a sharing, you know, with him,” Alice reflects in the liner notes, “It’s sort of a being with him on a mental plane or on a spiritual plane.”
Though she’d been advised to keep her set to 20 minutes, it was clear from the outset that earthly matter of time and space were no longer of concern for Alice Coltrane. On its own, “Africa” clocks in at just under half an hour. Though this version of the tune has made the rounds as a bootleg (sourced from a WQXR broadcast), the quality of the recording here brings the piece to new life. It’s a bracing shift from the first half of the set, opening with a drum solo that settles itself into the main modal swing, with Sanders and Shepp trading squeals and growls as Alice comps into the mystic.
Though part of the live repertoire of John Coltrane’s second quartet (which featured Alice, Pharoah and Jimmy Garrison), “Leo” would’ve been new to most listeners, as it had yet to make an appearance on record. A visceral shock to the system, “Leo” hits a raw space between epiphany and breakdown, blaring out of the silence with utter frenetic intensity, leaving Carnegie Hall shrinking in the distance as the band hurtles toward the stratosphere. Alice’s piano comes alive in a rippling ascent toward the stellar regions, accessing making way for a dialogue of sheer rhythm between as Blackwell and Jarvis volley into deep space before we’re brought freefalling back to earth through screeching fields of skronk, landing down once again on a low and sonorous piano chord.
The Carnegie Hall Concert is the unbridled majesty of the House of Coltrane in full tilt— reverent and cathartic, a vast and roiling cosmos alive with the energy of raw creation colliding and exploding into pure expression, where peace and universal consciousness can finally exist for all. | j annis
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