Alice Coltrane tribute tour comes to UC Theatre in Berkeley
The brainchild of noted hip-hop and soul producers Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge, Jazz Is Dead presents a special tribute to spiritual jazz giant Alice Coltrane featuring her son Ravi Coltrane at the UC Theatre Saturday night.
While they both had long successful careers prior to collaborating -- Muhammad as a member of iconic hip-hop act A Tribe Called Quest and super group Lucy Pearl, and multi-instrumentalist Younge for his production skills and film work -- the pair began a fruitful partnership that has included acclaimed soundtrack work for the Netflix show Luke Cage and recordings with their group the Midnight Hour for Younge's Linear Labs imprint. More recently, the pair launched its ambitious Jazz Is Dead project.
Initially focusing on live concerts with such heavily-sampled luminaries as Roy Ayers and Lonnie Liston Smith, Jazz Is Dead has also brought some of those '70s jazz influences and inspirations into the studio to record full albums, including such giants as Black Jazz recording artists Doug and Jean Carn, saxophonist Gary Bartz, longtime Gil Scott-Heron collaborator Brian Jackson and Brazilian masters Azymuth, Marco Valle and João Donato as well as like-minded younger musicians like Los Angeles group Katalyst.
In addition to the collective's popular ongoing concert series in Los Angeles, last summer they launched "Jazz Is Dead: The Tour" which played dates across the country with '70s jazz greats Jackson, Carn and Henry Franklin. While some earlier tours had a collaborative approach teaming seasoned jazz legends with a house ensemble, as well as tours with Brazilian legends Hermeto Pascoal, Arthur Verocai and Milton Nascimento and French jazz group Cortex among others.
Jazz Is Dead brings this traveling tribute to spiritual jazz icon Alice Coltrane to the UC Theatre, one of three West Coast dates that the show is playing in February and March. Groundbreaking saxophonist John Coltrane -- who grew from playing with fellow trailblazers Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk to leading his legendary quartet featuring volcanic drummer Elvin Jones and innovative pianist McCoy Tyner before embarking on more exploratory experiments like his spiritual hymn A Love Supreme and the collective improvisational opus Ascension -- had brought his wife Alice into his group in early 1966 to replace the departing Tyner.
After John's untimely death the following year from liver cancer at age 40, Alice became not only the steward to her husband's recorded legacy, but established herself as visionary artist in her own right. Adding harp to her arsenal of instruments, the musician's 1968 debut A Monastic Trio paid tribute to her husband while mining similar spiritually minded territory. The musician would release a string of cosmic jazz recordings with members of his band including saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders, drummer Rasheid Ali and bassist Jimmy Garrison as well as other jazz luminaries like bassists Ron Carter and Charlie Haden and saxophonist Joe Henderson.
Beginning with her groundbreaking 1970 album Journey to Satchidananda, Coltrane introduced Indian instrumentation and influences that would mark her music for the rest of her career. Coltrane shifted to organ as one of her main instruments on Universal Consciousness the following year while embracing increasingly complex orchestral arrangements. She would later collaborate with John Coltrane devotee Carlos Santana and record a trio of records for Warner Bros. before moving away from secular life and becoming the spiritual director for a Vedantic ashram in Southern California.
However, she continued to record hypnotic spiritual music built around chanting, percussion, organ and synthesizer through the 1980s and '90s that were sold on cassette at the ashram. Coltrane returned to recording jazz and performing live in the early 2000s. She recorded and released Translinear Light with Ravi (who also produced the album) and his brother Oran in 2004, her first commercial release in over a quarter century. Two years later, she played a trio of concerts to mark what would have been her husband's 80th birthday, including one for the SF Jazz Festival with Ravi, Haden and drummer Roy Haynes. Sadly in the midst of renewed interest in her music, Alice Coltrane died of respiratory failure the following year at age 69.
Some of her religious recordings would eventually be compiled and released by the Luaka Bop label in 2017. The material featured on World Spirituality Classics 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda would expand the audience for some of her underappreciated later work.
Recent years have seen a surge of interest in both John and Alice Coltrane between the 2017 documentary film Chasing Trane and a string of new, previously unreleased material: the studio recordings Blue World and Both Directions at Once for John Coltrane, as well as a lost live recording of "A Love Supreme" featuring his classic quartet augmented by Sanders, second bassist Donald Garrett and alto saxophonist Carlos Ward that was issued in 2021. Kirtan: Turiya Sings added to Alice Coltrane's legacy with it's solo voice and organ recordings from the early 1980s. Most of her discography from the '70s has been repressed on vinyl with Impulse recently releasing a stunning previously unheard live recording from a 1971 Carnegie Hall concert that includes Sanders, fellow sax icon Archie Shepp and dueling drummers drummers Ed Blackwell and Clifford Jarvis.
For his part, Ravi Coltrane studied music at the California Institute of the Arts before embarking on a lengthy career as a sideman, touring with his father's drummer Elvin Jones in his group and playing with trumpeter Wallace Roney before an extended stint with alto saxophonist and M-Base Collective founder Steve Coleman. He also played with a wide range of luminaries including keyboard giants Geri Allen, Kenny Barron, McCoy Tyner, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock, Bay Area Latin guitar hero Carlos Santana, bassist Stanley Clarke, and sax greats Sanders and Branford Marsalis. He wouldn't issue his first album as a leader until the release of Moving Pictures in 1997. In 2004, Ravi and his He has also worked in the studio with another family member, and experimental music producer Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus
Ravi Coltrane has paid tribute to his parents' music in the past, playing residencies at the SFJAZZ Center that included a performance of A Love Supreme on the album's 50th anniversary and revisiting their classic catalogs with a variety of collaborators. For this Jazz Is Dead tribute tour that stops at the UC Theatre on Saturday, Coltrane is joined by rising young harp player Brandee Younger -- who has earned acclaim with her modern take on the jazz harp styles of Coltrane and Dorothy Ashby, who Younger paid tribute to with her 2023 album Brand New Life -- Tel Aviv-born piano prodigy Gadi Lehavi and Bay Area drummer Elé Howell (both regular Ravi Coltrane collaborators), bassist Rashaan Carter and a special guest.
Jazz Is Dead Presents Translinear Light: the Music of Alice Coltrane
Saturday, Feb.22, 8 p.m. $45
UC Theatre
