World Galaxy

Alice Coltrane had planted her spiritual-jazz roots so deep by 1971 that her identity as a visionary improviser, bandleader, and musician had clearly transcended her status as jazz’s most notable widow. Still, this is the one album where Alice invokes John Coltrane’s presence most movingly, bookending this November ’71 session with radical reinterpretations of two of his most renowned selections. The intense sweep and towering dynamics of the 16-member string section that accompanies her give a dizzying breadth to the funky, fluttering organ playing with which she gloriously discombobulates the swing of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “My Favorite Things,” and her vision of “A Love Supreme,” featuring narration by Swami Satchidananda, toys with grace and dissonance with all the weight of remembrance and mourning. And her three originals — the bop-disassembling “Galaxy Around Olodumare,” the gorgeous harp-led “Galaxy in Turiya,” and the weightless, symphonic vertigo of the almost entirely rhythmless “Galaxy in Satchidananda” — run a stunning gamut of tonal experimentation and post-modal unpredictability.