Artist: Alice Coltrane

Alice Lucille Coltrane, also known as Swamini Turiyasangitananda or simply Turiya, was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader and Hindu spiritual leader.

An accomplished pianist and one of the few harpists in the history of jazz, Coltrane recorded many albums as a bandleader, beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s for Impulse! and other record labels. She was married to the jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane, with whom she performed in 1966–1967. One of the foremost proponents of spiritual jazz, her eclectic music proved influential both within and outside the world of jazz.

She founded the Vedantic Center in 1975 and the Shanti Anantam ashram in California in 1983, where she served as spiritual director. On July 3, 1994, she rededicated and inaugurated the land as Sai Anantam Ashram. During the 1980s and 1990s, she recorded several albums of Hindu devotional songs before returning to spiritual jazz in the 2000s and releasing her final album Translinear Light in 2004.

Alice McLeod pursued music and started to perform in various clubs around Detroit, until moving to Paris in the late 1950s. She studied classical music, and also jazz with Bud Powell in Paris, where she worked as the intermission pianist at the Blue Note Jazz Club in 1960. It was there that McLeod appeared on French television in a performance with Lucky Thompson, Pierre Michelot and Kenny Clarke.

She played jazz as a professional in Detroit, with her own trio and as a duo with vibraphonist Terry Pollard. In 1962–63, she played with Terry Gibbs' quartet, when she met John Coltrane. In 1965, they married in Juárez, Mexico.

Alice and John's growing involvement in spirituality influenced some of John's compositions and projects, such as A Love Supreme. In January 1966, Alice Coltrane replaced McCoy Tyner as pianist with John Coltrane's group. She subsequently recorded with him and continued playing with the band until John's death in 1967. After her husband's death, she continued to forward the musical and spiritual vision, and started to release records as a composer and bandleader.

Her first album, A Monastic Trio, was recorded in 1967. From 1968 to 1977, she released thirteen full-length records. As the years passed, her musical direction moved further from standard jazz into the more cosmic, spiritual world. Albums like Universal Consciousness (1971), and World Galaxy (1972), show a progression from a four-piece line-up to a more orchestral approach, with lush string arrangements and cascading harp glissandos.

During the late 1970s to early 1980s, Coltrane would become progressively more influenced by the ecstatic devotionalism of the Sathya Sai Baba movement and ISKCON communities present on the West Coast, incorporating their bhajans into her artistic milieu. The album Radha-Krsna Nama Sankirtana (Lit. 'chanting the names of Radha and Krishna') was released by Warner Bros in 1977, featuring gospel-inflected renditions of popular bhajans and mantras within both movements.