Alice Coltrane (1937–2007) was the most influential jazz harpist of all time. She was also a pianist, bandleader and composer.
Born Alice McLeod, she married jazz saxophonist John Coltrane in 1965. After his death in 1967, she recorded a handful of seminal albums which are considered classics of spiritual jazz. In the late 1970s, she retreated to her ashram in California where she continued to live as a Hindu teacher and ascetic. In the 1980s, Coltrane recorded multiple albums of devotional songs, which have been reissued to widespread critical acclaim in the 2010s. Alice and John’s son, Ravi Coltrane (born 1965), is also a respected jazz saxophonist.
