Kirtan - Turiya sings

"Turiya's divine songs and infinite chants pared back, repackaged and empowered: Kirtan: Turiya Sings is drawn from the same source as the 1982 cassette Turiya Sings ... Here the concentration is entirely on solo songs, stripped of all the decoration - the strings and synthesisers - from their original incarnations, leaving just Alice's voice and her Wurlitzer organ. Something like the opening Jagadishwar benefits greatly from the removal of the trimmings. It might be blasphemous to say so but the result is curiously reminiscent of hearing Nico performing the material from The Marble Index and Desertshore in concert, the clarity and directness of her voice and harmonium revealed in the absence of John Cale's arrangements ... The longer you listen, the more you're drawn in and the less aesthetically confining the music's self-imposed restraints seem. What's clear to sympathetic listeners is the direct emotional link between John Coltrane's pioneering "Spiritual" of 1961 and the sound of his wife's songs released 60 years later: very different means, same search".

Læs anmeldelse

"From the opening moments of "Jagadishwar," Coltrane's dignified worship songs seemingly transcend time. They abundantly reflect an earlier period in her own life when she was still in Detroit playing organ in church for gospel choirs and congregations during the early 1950s. That said, they also wed the millennia-old Hindu prayers to the 20th century African American Church and the blues Rev. Thomas A. Dorsey used in reframing gospel music. A striking example here is "Krishna Krishna"; it drones along a skeletal chord progression as Coltrane's instrumental pulse underscores her subdued, vulnerable, almost unbearably tender chant and suggests a country blues ... Kirtan: Turiya Sings is more subdued than the original (perhaps they should have been packaged together), but because of the power in Coltrane's singing, it is also deeper emotionally. Rather than a recording designed to project music for a congregation to respond to collectively, it resonates with the personal primacy of private devotional prayer".

Læs anmeldelse

"Hun endte som en af de mest toneangivende improvisationsmusikere i det 20. århundrede. Nu er sagnomspundne kassettebåndoptagelser fra Alice Coltranes åndelige refugium dukket op, og de kan vise sig at være lige, hvad vi har brug for midt i en travl hverdag ... På de ni sjældne kirtans, der alle stammer fra 1981, synger og messer Alice Coltrane over en frit improviseret bund skabt på et gammelt Wurlitzer-orgel. Det kan virke ogginokket sådan at skulle lytte sig gennem en god time med præhinduistiske lovprisninger med sydindisk fortegn og sunget på sanskrit, men det er der al mulig grund til at kaste sig ud i, for hovedpersonen formår at gøre både musikken og messen nærværende for omverdenen uanset religiøst tilhørsforhold".

Læs anmeldelse