I’m sooo sorry for not getting this up last night! My bad. It’s Mrs. K.P.’s birthday this weekend and it slipped my mind.
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Jazz Jam 3 February 2006
Intro to the “All About Jazz” Website
Wednesday, 3:54 PM. It’s already Wednesday, and I’m sitting here at work thinking, “I really need to get going on this week’s Jazz Jam; I’ve got a backlog of work for the part-time consulting business (job #2) that clients are starting to call about; and I have no idea of a topic.” I need to go trawl the internet and see what I come up with… So I go to the All About Jazz website, and take a look around. Have they redesigned the site? There seems to be more going on here than I remember… I think they’re redesigned the site, and it looks great… I feel like a kid in a candy shop…
At the top, the main header includes a search engine, links to the bulletin board forum (“community”), to sign up for the monthly newsletter, (with links from there to all back issues), and for free daily MP3 downloads – of the entire piece, not just 30 seconds worth, with the previous 10 downloads also still available. So you can really experiment (for free!) and get a much better feel of whether you like an artist than you can get from the short clips at the megabookstore.com type sites.
I entered “New Orleans” in the search engine, and found the following reasonably current information:
Post-Katrina Jazz in New Orleans (Jan 8, 2006): “Like scattered remnants of a defeated Roman army, New Orleans musicians can be found far and wide, surfacing like bobbing corks in a pond. [snip]
One can only surmise that better days are in store for New Orleans and even now, if you look in the right places, the Dixieland scene is resurfacing in parity with the City’s laborious path back to normalcy.”
Below this are several large buttons, each of which opens to a menu of links: Reviews / Artists / Columns / Global / Guides / Centers
Reviews includes not only CDs, books, and videos, but reviews of downloads and DVDs, and even a column called “Jazz from the Vinyl Junkyard” that reviews vinyl recordings that should be or have been reissued on CD.
Artists includes profiles and interviews.
Columns includes such features as “Building a Jazz Library,” “Jazz Humor,” and “Genius Guide to Jazz.” That sounded intriguing, so I clicked. It’s a sporadic column by “Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius.” Which is kind of like Jazz Jam, but (and I hate to admit it) wittier (pout). To wit – From “How to Win Friends and Influence People to Jazz“:
I have long believed that the best way to spread jazz is virally, from person to person (or by spiking community water supplies with Coltrane CD’s) That means that it is the responsibility of everyone who loves jazz to spread the music to any and all. But how? you ask, pulling at my lapels with wild-eyed desperation like some hopped-up dope fiend in a bad fifties movie where the fresh-faced girl-next-door falls in with the wrong crowd and eventually ends up with a social disease.
This is really funny. Go read the whole thing.
Global is a look at jazz happenings in cities and countries around the world.
Guides provides links organized by topics, such as jazz festivals, musicians, radio stations (over 300; you can search in each category too, so you can find stations if you’re going to be traveling), recod labels, venues, and print publications.
Centers includes links to articles, information on artists with birthdays that day, CD reviews, news, podcasts, and video.
Before leaving the upper left corner of the page, don’t miss the “Welcome!” and “Newbie?” links. The former tells all about the site for newcomers; the latter is mislabeled – it has lots of great information for anyone, not just a newbie (like a link to a thread on “Great but Obscure Albums to Purchase.”)
There’s lots more, just on the front page (front-paged CD reviews, interviews, articles, new and upcoming releases, news, community, and at the bottom, a “quote of the day”) but you get the idea. If you love jazz, or are just beginning to explore jazz, bookmark this page and visit often. Trying to describe it all here would be like me going over there and trying to tell about the frog pond in a few paragraphs…
Alice Coltrane
Wednesday, 6:35 PM. I’m at home, fixing dinner (Dr. Mrs. K.P. has some kind of doggy surgery going on and won’t be in until 7:30 PM), and decide to start going through the stack of CDs I just checked out of the library as I cook… I put in Alice Coltrane’s 2004 CD “Translinear Light.” Now, I knew Alice Coltrane (widow of John Coltrane) was a jazz musician in her own right, but I’d never heard any of her work. I wasn’t ready for this album – I think I’d been subconsciously avoiding her work, maybe pigeonholing her as some kind of jazz version of Yoko Ono [widow of great artist, an artist in her own right, continues on producing spiritually-inspired work, yada-yada.]. Boy, was I wrong – I was blown away – and knew immediately who I’d be talking to you about this week.
Here are the basic facts, so we’re starting from the same place:
Alice Coltrane (b. 1937) is an American jazz pianist, organist, and harpist.
Coltrane was born Alice McLeod on 27 August 1937 in Detroit, Michigan. She studied classical music, and was given piano lessons by Bud Powell. She began playing jazz as a professional in Detroit, with her own trio and as a duo with vibist Terry Pollard. From 1962 to 1963 she played with Terry Gibbs’s quartet, when she met John Coltrane, with whose group she played piano from 1965 until his death in 1967, and whom she married in 1966. They had three children: singer Miki and saxophonists Oran and Ravi.Since her husband’s death she has continued to play with her own groups, moving into more and more meditative music, and recently playing with her children. She is one of the few harpists in the history of jazz.
In the early 1970s, after years of involvement with Eastern religion, Coltrane took the name Swami Turyasangitananda. She is a devotee of the Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba. Reference
What the above leaves out is how her spirituality is the soul that breathes life into her music. As alluded to by NPR:
When her famous husband died of liver cancer in 1967, Alice Coltrane became a fierce guardian of his vast musical estate. She was also left with the task of raising their four children. She continued with a string of well-received albums, but quit the jazz world in 1978 [to pursue her spiritual quest through Hinduism – K.P.].
Now [2004], after a 26-year hiatus, Alice Coltrane is back with a new CD, Translinear Light. The title is a play on the Coltrane name, and also a nod to Alice Coltrane’s deep spirituality.
This point is also made in a worthwhile review from the Washington Post:
Alice Coltrane’s “Translinear Light” is not an album for cynics. Its spiritual themes — whether Hindu, Christian or the more secular visions of modern jazz — are offered up without a trace of irony. On her first jazz-related album in 26 years, Coltrane puts her heart on the line.
The same intense personal spirituality that John Coltrane brought to the recording of “A Love Supreme” infuses the music of Alice Coltrane – heartfelt, but in her case not skating the fine line of pietism that “A Love Supreme” did (perhaps, after what America has been through since ALS was issued, such overt piety can no longer be mustered). For Alice Coltrane, the journey is personal:
At its best, music is a reflection of who we are, where we’ve been and where we’re going. It transcends classification and, instead, becomes something personal, a powerful force that paints a clear and honest picture of the spirit of the performer. While some artists are concerned with the mechanics of music, the logic of how notes and rhythms fit together in new and intriguing ways–and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that–others view music as more of a conduit, a means of giving a certain physicality to the incorporeal. [Read the entire review here; it’s a good one.]
Sons Ravi and Oran do a good job, as do the other musicians:
…That’s not to say there isn’t a great deal of skill behind this programme that consists of original music, both composed and improvised, as well as a number of traditional spiritual tunes and two pieces by John Coltrane, “Crescent” and “Leo.” The supporting group of musicians includes bassists Charlie Haden and James Genus, drummers Jack DeJohnette and Jeff “Tain” Watts, and Ravi Coltrane on various percussion, tenor and soprano saxophones; Ravi’s brother Oran makes an appearance on alto saxophone. The level of musicianship and empathy is uncommonly high.
An NPR report on Alice Coltrane and sound clips from Translinear Light are available here.
Here is a listing of all her albums, in case [like me] you’re new to this artist and on the lookout for additional music:
* A Monastic Trio (1967-68)
* Huntington Ashram Monastery (1969)
* Ptah, the El Daoud (1970)
* Journey in Satchidananda (1970)
* Astral Meditations (1966-71)
* Universal Consciousness (1972)
* World Galaxy (1972)
* Lord of Lords (1972)
* John Coltrane: Infinity (1973)
* Reflection on Creation and Space (A Five Year View) (1973)
* The Elements (1973; with Joe Henderson)
* Illuminations (1974; with Carlos Santana)
* Radha-Krisna Nama Sankirtana (1976)
* Transcendence (1977)
* Transfiguration (1978)
* Translinear Light (2004; with Ravi Coltrane)