Alice Coltrane’s Ashram Recordings to Be Released in Full for First Time

Decades after they were first distributed on cassette and CD to a small community of Hindu devotees, the private devotional recordings Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda made in the 1980s and ’90s will receive a full official release. Matador Records has announced the reissue of four albums—Turiya Sings, Divine Songs, Infinite Chants, and Glorious Chants—that originally circulated only at the Sai Anantam Ashram near Los Angeles, where Coltrane led spiritual services.

The recordings blend gospel, traditional Indian chanting, and avant-garde jazz, layered with synthesizers, organ, and the voices of the Ashram choir. Matador will restore Coltrane’s original mixes, artwork, and track sequences across vinyl, CD, cassette, and digital formats. A release date has not yet been given.

Michelle Coltrane, the musician’s daughter, described the music as “a pure reflection of the life journey my mother was on,” one of devotion and spiritual seeking. After Coltrane’s husband, saxophonist John Coltrane, died in 1967, she turned increasingly inward, eventually renouncing secular performance to lead the ashram she founded. Yet the recordings escaped their intended sphere: they seeped into underground jazz circles, passed among collectors and curious listeners.

Portions surfaced publicly years ago. Luaka Bop compiled tracks from three albums in 2018; Impulse! released an early, synthesizer-free mix of Turiya Sings in 2021. More recently, My Morning Jacket’s Jim James cited the spiritual recordings as an inspiration for his own work. The full reissue returns a body of music that, though intended for a temple, has long claimed a quiet, cross-genre resonance—devotional music that skipped the gatekeepers.