Alice Coltrane – The Carnegie Hall Concert
(Impulse!. Album review by Phil Johnson) 

Recorded in 1971 at a benefit for the Integral Yoga Institute and now released in full for the first time, The Carnegie Hall Concert is both an historically important document and an eminently listenable recording full of insistent grooves, remarkably powerful playing and intense compositional depth. In short, it’s probably essential for anyone wishing to understand where jazz was then and where it has got to now. It inaugurates what is billed as a year dedicated to Alice Coltrane by the label, in partnership with The John and Alice Coltrane Home.

The release also comes at a moment when Alice Coltrane (born Alice Lucille McLeod in Detroit in 1937, died Los Angeles, 2007) seems more prescient than ever. The transcendent-sublime mode she pioneered, together with the late experiments of her husband John Coltrane and their colleague Pharaoh Sanders (who appears in the ensemble here), have influenced everyone from Floating Points to Matthew Halsall to even Paul Weller along with the entire legacy of spiritual jazz, as well as inspiring – along with the great Dorothy Ashby – every jazz harp player going. But the harp is only half the story, if that, as Alice Coltrane was a pianist first, and her first concert-size harp a gift from John Coltrane that was not delivered until shortly after his death.

For the Carnegie Hall concert, which includes four compositions, she played harp for the first two numbers, both written by herself, and piano for the last two, both written by John Coltrane. The contrast between them is considerable, with the final two numbers, an epic ‘Africa’ that clocks in at almost 30 minutes and ‘Leo’, the final encore that followed, producing the most spirited free playing, with Alice pummelling the keyboard in a manner somewhere between McCoy Tyner (whom she replaced in the John Coltrane Quartet) and Cecil Taylor.

The band is a story in itself, with two bassists (Jimmy Garrison and Cecil McBee), two drummers (Ed Blackwell and Clifford Jarvis, the latter a resident in Hackney before his death in 1999) and two saxophonists, the aforementioned Sanders and Archie Shepp, plus for the first two compositions Kumar Kramer on harmonium and Tulsi Reynolds on tamboura. ‘Journey to Satchidananda’ – perhaps her most celebrated tune, and the title track of what was at the time her latest album – opens the concert and begins with a kind of double bass prologue, one plucked, one bowed, before the familiar loping riff kicks in, against a gentle splash of cymbals and tamboura drone. It’s added to by a beautifully poised and gentle-sounding harp solo that could almost be categorised as ambient, seconded by tootling flute and soprano sax from Sanders and Shepp. Basically, it’s heaven. ‘Shiva-Loka’, which follows, and which Impulse! have made available in advance of the release, continues the eastern-sounding ambient mode, with Alice on harp playing those trademark swirling, rippling-water motifs that, whether orchestrated for strings or heard on harp alone, have become perhaps her most recognisable sonic identity.  

After this, it’s time for the heavy mob, with ‘Africa’ and ‘Leo’ cueing in some incredibly intense improvisations featuring full-on squawking and over-blowing from the horns. There are also lengthy drum and bass solos throughout, that while always interesting, may be the reason why the concert was not seen as a commercial enough product to release before now. Better late than never would seem to be the verdict. You probably need The Carnegie Hall Concert.

The Carnegie Hall Concert, not previously available commercially, is released on 22 March 

from https://londonjazznews.com