We are honored to announce that Matador Records will issue the first complete authorized release of the four devotional albums that Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda created during the ’80s and ’90s.
TURIYA SINGS
DIVINE SONGS
INFINITE CHANTS
GLORIOUS CHANTS
They were originally distributed to members on cassette (the fourth one on CD) at the Sai Anantam Ashram north of Los Angeles, and have been unavailable in any form for decades. Some tracks from the second, third, and fourth albums were compiled in 2018 on The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda (Luaka Bop), and a version of the first tape, Turiya Sings, was released in 2021 as Kirtan ( Impulse), an early version lacking the synthesizer parts. Most of this transformational music will be seeing the light of day for the first time, in its complete original form in this new series which will faithfully restore Coltrane’s original mixes, artwork, and sequences in their entirety, on vinyl, compact disc, cassette, and all digital formats.
“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.
– Michelle Coltrane
Alice Coltrane (1937 – 2007) was a composer, jazz musician, and spiritual leader. The widow of John Coltrane and the pianist in his later bands, she is responsible for a pioneering and virtuosic body of work that drew on jazz, gospel music, new age, electronic sounds, modern classical, and deep spirituality. The records that she released on Impulse! and Warner Brothers as a bandleader – Journey in Satchidananda (1971), Universal Consciousness (1971), and Eternity (1976) to name just a few – are widely regarded as classics. During the early ’80s, Coltrane founded the Sai Anantam Ashram outside of Los Angeles, CA where she withdrew from the mainstream music industry and fully devoted herself to spiritual life.
