Alice Coltrane: The Carnegie Hall Concert

 

    It was quite a band that pianist and harpist Alice Coltrane assembled for a all-star benefit in February 1971 to raise funds for the Integral Yoga Institute run by her guru, Swami Satchidananda. Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp were the saxophonists, Jimmy Garrison and Cecil McBee each played bass, and Ed Blackwell and Clifford Jarvis were the drummers. Also present were Tulsi playing tamboura, and Kumar Kramer on harmonium. It’s taken many decades for this music to finally appear as The Carnegie Hall Concert, thanks to Ed Michel, who supervised the recording after producing Alice Coltrane’s Impulse albums Ptah, The El Daoud and Journey In Satchidananda. The original 4-track tapes have been lost, and all we have now is a reference mix that Michel made back in the Seventies. In his extensive and highly entertaining liner notes for this release, he notes the mix he made yielded a “quality being about 80 to 95% of that of the ‘master mix’”. With some modern processing tweaks, it sounds pretty good, although a dearth of microphones means Tulsi and Kramer are barely audible. The 80-minute program consists of four long performances. In order, there are two tunes composed by Alice Coltrane (both the title track and Shiva-Loka from the just-released Journey In Satchidananda) and two written by John Coltrane, Africa, from his 1961 Africa/Brass album, and Leo, first recorded in 1966 with Alice Coltrane on piano. The first two pieces unfold as distinctly spiritual and “within a specifically Vedic context - in sound and message,” as Lauren Du Graf testifies in her liner essay for this release. The drummers begin Africa in a blaze of tom-toms and cymbals before Alice enters on piano to set up the saxes for the main theme. It’s a boisterous and invigorating performance that maintains its high-spirited intensity for half an hour, notable for Shepp’s lengthy tenor solo and Alice’s powerful piano work. It is worth noting that according to Du Graf there were “no group rehearsals,” making the cohesiveness of the large ensemble a bit of a surprise and a testament to Alice Coltrane’s vision and tenacity. The closing performance of Leo features more of Alice’s piano and a drum duet for Blackwell and Jarvis before the saxophonists lead the ensemble for the closing crescendo. It was a rather strange evening at Carnegie Hall. Opening the concert was Laura Nyro, another devotee of Satchidananda, with a 20-minute set of solo piano and vocals. Next up was the Alice Coltrane band, who were asked to keep things short to make room for the closing act, the Rascals. That band’s singer and organist Felix Cavaliere was also a disciple of Satchidananda, and he notes that “The spirit of that event took hold from the beginning ... I kind of remember the spaciousness… I'm sure the audience was a little overwhelmed because it was kind of hard to figure out what exactly was happening up there.” Even so, you can hear the enthusiasm of the crowd at the conclusion of Africa, when the group had already been on stage for an hour. All in all, The Carnegie Hall Concert is an amazing document of an almost-lost performance and a fascinating chapter in the development of modern music. Impulse!; Pharoah Sanders (ts, ss, fl, fife, perc) Archie Shepp (ts, ss, perc) Alice Coltrane (p, harp, perc) Jimmy Garrison, Cecil McBee (b) Ed Blackwell, Clifford Jarvis (d) Tulsi (tamboura) Kumar Kramer (harmonium); NYC, February 21, 1971; Journey in Satchidananda/ Shiva-Loka/ Africa/ Leo; 79:29. www.impulserecords.com