The late jazz musician’s Turiya Sings, Divine Songs, Infinite Chants, and Glorious Chants will be made widely available on cassette tape, CD, vinyl and digital formats.
Matador Records have announced plans for the complete and official release of several largely unavailable albums from American harpist and pianist Alice Coltrane.
Turiya Sings, Divine Songs, Infinite Chants and Glorious Chants were created and recorded in the 1980s and 1990s during a time in which the late jazz musician had withdrawn from the mainstream music industry and fully devoted herself to a spiritual life, founding the Sai Anantam Ashram in California’s Santa Monica Mountains. Each of the four albums were privately pressed and distributed locally to members of Coltrane’s sanctuary, thereafter remaining unavailable on any physical format to the wider public for decades. Noted as exploring gospel, traditional Indian chants and the outward-looking avant-garde jazz sensibilities for which Coltrane was best known and revered, Matador’s newly plotted release campaign will present the sequestered recordings collectively dubbed the Ashram Tapes in their unaltered original forms with fully restored mixes, artwork and sequencing made available on cassette tape, CD, vinyl and digital formats. Release date information is yet to be announced.
Coltrane’s daughter Michelle shares,
“Alice’s vow to a monastic life opened a passageway that introduced her to ancient sacred recitations, voices, rhythms, and melodies – divine, ethereal sounds that bridged the material and spiritual realms. Many interpret this experience as offering a profound understanding of the human experience.
Musically, it’s a pure reflection of the life journey my mother was on at the time. She was seeking, in every, most authentic way, a life of devotion, transcendence, and spiritual elevation. The music was an inspired offering to the sanctity and feeling of this spiritual path.
The profundity of Turiya Alice Coltrane’s musical offerings now being made publicly available is in alignment with a divine order, something Alice often spoke about. Artists never stop creating.”
Read Matador’s full statement here.
Words by Sam Wilkinson.
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