Music / Religion
Alice Coltrane
1937–2007 · jazz pianist, harpist, composer, spiritual leader
Detroit-born pianist and harpist, a Cass Tech product who played the city's jazz clubs before joining and marrying John Coltrane and pioneering spiritual jazz.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
West Hills, Los Angeles, California
aged 69- Birth name
- Alice Lucille McLeod
- Also known as
- Turiya · Swamini Turiyasangitananda · Alice McLeod
- Detroit years
- 1937–1962
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Alice McLeod was born in Detroit in 1937 into a musical family: her mother sang in a church choir, her half-brother Ernie Farrow became a jazz bassist, and her younger sister Marilyn McLeod later wrote songs for Motown. She studied classical music at Cass Technical High School and turned down a scholarship to the Detroit Institute of Technology to focus on music. She played in church and then in clubs around Detroit, learning from pianist Terry Pollard and harpist Dorothy Ashby. After a spell in Paris in the late 1950s and a short first marriage, she came back to Detroit with her daughter and worked with her own trio and in a duo with Pollard. In the early 1960s she left for New York, where she met John Coltrane; she joined his band in 1966. Her later harp-and-piano albums, such as Journey in Satchidananda, made her a founding figure of spiritual jazz.
Highlights
- Studied classical music at Cass Technical High School
- Pianist in John Coltrane's group, 1966–1967
- Journey in Satchidananda (1971) is a spiritual-jazz classic
- Founded the Vedantic Center (1975) and a California ashram
- Played Ann Arbor's Hill Auditorium in 2006, months before her death
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 2
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · early 1950s
Cass Technical High School
Detroit's famed public magnet school, where she studied classical music and played in the marching band.
Performed here · 2006
Hill Auditorium
University of Michigan concert hall where she played on September 23, 2006, which would have been John Coltrane's 80th birthday.