Serene and soft-spoken, the late Alice Coltrane carried a regal disposition—a sphingine, ethereal air that infused her music and foreshadowed her repute as a true spiritual leader. Widowed in 1967 at the age of 29, she emerged from the shadow of one of jazz’s greatest impresarios to forge her own formidable legacies in music and devout practice. She didn’t achieve the dazzling celebrity that her husband did, but it didn’t matter. For her, there was a far more important calling than fame.
Jazz musician, composer, devotional leader, and muse to her husband, John Coltrane—one of the greatest musicians in American history—Alice Coltrane is once again being drawn into the light, this time in Alice Coltrane: Monument Eternal, a new exhibition at The Hammer Museum at UCLA that aims to both spotlight and contextualize a woman who, through very different tools—the piano, the harp, and meditation—melded the melodious and the mystic.
The first gallery, Sonic Innovation, explores Coltrane through sound, whether a video clip of her dreamily playing the harp or a bright orange banquette equipped with headsets where you can sit, close your eyes, and listen to her music. There are urgent beats and ethereal chimes; suddenly, a piano gleefully interrupts, like an old friend showing up at the house party. Then come bells. Guitar strings. The gentle rub of cymbals. It’s all soothing chaos. A wall of her album covers shows her evolution not only as an artist but also as a woman, as she transgresses stately widowhood to become a boldly confident, independent artist—contemporary jazz’s answer to Pam Grier. A nearby video lounge screens interdisciplinary artist Cauleen Smith’s short film Pilgrim, which traces Coltrane’s manifold life; nearby, old-school 1970s televisions each offer a snippet from a different Alice era. You could spend the entire afternoon in Sonic Innovation and leave satisfied.
The exhibition’s third gallery, Architectural Intimacy, exploring “Coltrane’s unique ability and tendency to create spaces that enhanced and catered to her musical and spiritual output,” is smaller, more intimate, and feels more quixotic. Fluorescent light tubes by Devin T. Mayes lie unlit on the ground in a corner; a bamboo-screened salon, replete with scattered pillows and a loop screening of Suné Woods’s video On this day in meditation, aims to conjure the halcyon escape of an ashram retreat, but falls a bit short.
