SoundSpace

The award-winning series returns with a series of performances inspired by Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda and her unique legacy of American jazz and Indian devotional music.

Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitanda was an American jazz pianist, organist, harpist, singer, composer, swamini, and the wife of jazz musician and composer John Coltrane. A virtuoso on multiple instruments, Alice was drawn to various styles of music, including gospel, classical and jazz. She got her start playing in professional jazz groups in Detroit, then began to develop her own innovative style as a solo recording artist, creating complex arrangements and compositions. After meeting a guru and traveling to India in the 1970s, she became the Founder and Director of The Vedantic Center in 1975, and later established a spiritual community in the Santa Monica Mountains of Southern California. She passed away on January 12, 2007.

Alice\’s singular musical style is a synthesis of influences that include Detroit gospel, Stravinsky, bebop, traditional Hindi hymns, and classical Indian music. The September SoundSpace will explore these diverse influences and present new work directly inspired by her legacy. From 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 24, museumgoers will be able to experience a variety of performances throughout the museum, including:

• Maestros Gourisankar Karmakar (tabla) and Indradeep Ghosh (violin), internationally regarded interpreters of classical Indian music. A leading tabla maestro of the present generation, Gourisankar has toured internationally and accompanied many eminent artists for the last 24 years; he is also the founder of Austin\’s School of Indian Percussion and Music, where he teaches regularly.
• The Andre Hayward Quintet, performing late 60\’s bebop from the repertoire of Alice Coltrane and her peers. Andre is a member of the Lincoln Center Jazz Ensemble and winner of Washington, D.C.\’s International Thelonious Monk Trombone Competition. In addition to performing with notable artists like Joe Williams, Slide Hampton, the Mingus Dynasty Big Band and the Duke Ellington Orchestra, he recently performed with The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and The San Francisco Jazz Collective. A respected educator, Andre also has conducted numerous clinics and workshops worldwide.
• New York City-based drummer Ravish Momin, who combines Hindu chants and syncopated jazz-influenced beats using North Indian time-cycles and synths. Though his ideas are fundamentally seated in the Indian musical traditions, Ravish draws upon a diverse and eclectic range of musical influences, keeping with the philosophy of continually adding sounds and ideas to his musical palette.
• Trumpeter Adrian Ruiz, who will perform solo ballads by Alice Coltrane. In addition to performing regularly throughout Texas, Dr. Ruiz has performed internationally at the Montreux, North Sea, and Taichung Jazz Festivals. He has shared the stage with a number of renowned artists, including Jon Hendricks, Johnny Mathis, Buddy Miles, Eddie Palmieri, Bernadette Peters, The Temptations, and Mary Wilson and The Supremes.
• Density512, a “flexible, collaborative, and modern 21st-Century-minded chamber orchestra dedicated to sharing new and old music” with Austin audiences. Density512 will present two new works in response to Alice Coltrane’s music: Akshaya Tucker’s recently premiered Shaam for sitar and Sinfonietta in raga bihag, and a reimagined Stravinsky work by composer-conductor Jacob Schnitzer.
• The St. James Missionary Baptist Church Mass Choir, a 75-member group that will perform traditional gospel works.
• Tara Bhattacharya Reed is a multi-instrumentalist musician, singer, performance artist and filmmaker. Her musical oeuvre encompasses a wide variety of different genres including improvisation, electronic composition, chamber music, Indian Classical music and Bengali folk songs. Performance art idols include such luminaries as Leif Elggren, Lynda Bengalis, Martha Rosler and Alison Knowles. Her audiovisual performances often reflect upon the ideas, politics, images, and soundtracks of Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray. She runs Antumbrae Intermedia Events + Installations, regularly curating experimental music events and film screenings in Austin. For this program, her work, Coral Breathing, is dedicated to Alice Coltrane. In this piece she explores themes of Hindu spiritual practices, sounds, and movements in nature and vibration.
• Ted Carey, an improv sculptor and Texas Biennial artist will perform on turntables.

SoundSpace is generously underwritten by Michael Chesser.