About the project

Journey in Turiya is an homage to Alice Coltrane, the late musician and swamini of the Sai Anantam Ashram in California. Though widely known as the wife of jazz giant John Coltrane (and a crucial member of his late quintet) Alice Coltrane was herself a pioneer who continued after John’s passing to explore the frontiers of sound they’d begun to chart together. A genre-busting harpist, pianist, organist and composer who became a spiritual seeker, her work and persona represent a timely, relevant model of hybrid artistic and spiritual practice.

This installation incorporates light, color, a levitating harp case, and continuous sound. It’s a meditation on art, music and spirituality, proposing the figure of Coltrane as a kind of aesthetic guru. The title of course refers to Coltrane’s fourth solo album, Journey in Satchidananda (1970), inspired by her association with Swami Satchidananda in the late ‘60s.

Alice Coltrane became known as Turiya (transcendence, nirvana)— then Turiyasangitananda (the highest song of bliss) — as she deepened spiritually and worked to send “illuminating worlds of sound into the ethers of this universe” (as she describes in the liner notes to her 1971 album Universal Consciousness). This piece is my attempt to create a space within which audiences can honor Coltrane by considering the possibility of transcendence through an immersive aesthetic experience.

Light and sound emanate from three trikonas flanking the central sculptural element of the floating harp case.

Journey in Turiya was part of the inaugural SiteWork/Hopscotch expo, Sept. 5–7, 2013, to coincide with the Hopscotch Music Festival. It was also part of Moogfest 2017 in Durham, NC.