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California Festival Excursions: Alice Coltrane with Strings
The California Festival launches this month with more than two weeks of concerts from 95 arts organizations across the state that spotlight the Golden State as a home of new and trailblazing creativity. Online, California Festival Excursions collects writings and audio features from a range of celebrated authors that explore stories of that creative history—from avant-garde composer Henry Cowell to the early days of the San Francisco Tape Music Center to electroacoustic pioneer Maggi Payne.
Andy Beta explores a pivotal moment in Alice Coltrane’s career that happened shortly after she moved to California. To read the full story, listen to examples, and explore more features, visit cafestival.org/excursions
When Alice Coltrane relocated from Dix Hills to California in the early 1970s, her solo work was transformed. In her mind’s eye, Coltrane knew just how the music should sound: a blend of incandescent jazz and whirling strings that–when their tonalities all came together–would suggest the divine. But she couldn’t figure out just where to make the cut on the studio tape. And neither could her producer, Ed Michel. It was early July 1972 and Coltrane had recently moved her family from Dix Hills on Long Island to California, first to Encino before settling in Woodland Hills.
And now Alice was in a Los Angeles studio, trying to achieve this holy sound. She was booked for the entire week at The Village Recorder, a most auspicious studio space, putting together the album that would be a watermark of spiritual jazz, Lord of Lords. It would be Coltrane’s seventh solo album in as many years. And it would be the last album she would record for Impulse Records.
Built by Freemasons in 1922 on Santa Monica Boulevard, almost smack-dab in the middle between Beverly Hills and the Pacific Ocean, The Village had served as a Masonic temple for decades before it was taken over, first by a Bible Institute, and then later by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The Maharishi transformed it into the West Coast nerve center for Transcendental Meditation, and it’s said that the Beatles used to meditate in the large auditorium on the first floor. Now it was a proper recording studio, which would serve as the birthplace for everything from Steely Dan’s Aja to Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk
I regarded myself as the Charlie Parker of the razor blade; I could do impossible edits. But I just broke my back on that one and couldn’t make it work,” Ed Michel told Down Beat.
Alice was in the studio with her trio (bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Ben Riley) and a platoon of strings: twelve violinists, six violists, and seven cellists. They had just recorded her version of Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird, a ballet he had first written in 1910 and that she presented as a compact six-minute dervish of sound and vertiginous strings. And yet, the marriage between jazz trio and orchestral strings still sounded off. “There was an edit that needed to be made, and
“I’ll go home and meditate on it,” Coltrane told her longtime producer, and left for the day. When she arrived at the studio the next morning, the solution was in hand, as Michel recalled, recounting Coltrane’s own words: “I meditated on it, and I got some help from Bach and The Father”–which is how she always referred to her husband John after his passing–“and Mr. Stravinsky. Mr. Stravinsky said, ‘Cut it here.’” Michel remembered the astonishing result: “I said, it’s impossible. It will never work. But I cut it there and it worked perfectly.” With the ghosts of Bach, Coltrane, and Stravinsky guiding her, Alice Coltrane attained the sound she had long been seeking.
Find out what happens next at cafestival.org/excursions.
California Festival Excursions is presented as part of the LA Phil Insight initiative, which is generously supported by Linda and David Shaheen.
California Festival
In conjunction with the California Festival (November 3–19), the LA Phil Insight initiative has commissioned a series of editorial offerings highlighting the visionary figures and lesserknown pathways that have helped shape the state’s storied continuum of contemporary music. Newly commissioned features include in-depth articles, audio programs, visual essays, and original graphic scores from contributors including acclaimed music journalists Geeta Dayal and Andy Beta, MacArthur Fellow Josh
Kun, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Tim Page, pianist and producer Sarah Cahill, Grammy Award winner John Schneider, composer M.A. Tiesenga, and Peabody Award–winning broadcaster Nadia Sirota.
The California Festival’s editorial offerings can be found at cafestival.org/excursions New features will continually be added in the lead-up to the festival.
Pan-American Music Initiative: Canto en resistencia
Curated by LACMA’s head of contemporary art, Rita Gonzalez, as part of the Pan-American Music Initiative’s focus on feminism and cultural protest, the Canto en resistencia Insight programs spotlight contemporary Latina artists whose work intersects with the worlds of sound and music. Gonzalez’s programming kicks off on November 11 with Sonic Biographies, featuring punk legend Alice Bag, multidisciplinary artist and community archivist Guadalupe Rosales, and DJ collective Chulita Vinyl Club in conversation about the music that has influenced their work and set them on a path to move culture forward.
In partnership with the Library Foundation of Los Angeles’ ALOUD program, MacArthur Fellow
Cristina Rivera Garza will also join the festival, leading a discussion about her most recent work, Liliana’s Invincible Summer, on November 15. Tickets are available via the Library Foundation of Los Angeles (lfla.org ).