Alice Coltrane - Universal Consciousness
I love how the harp interacts with the other instruments in this record, it feels like there's a sense of freedom in the playing, it's not a delicate kind of playing, it's a very instinctive human style of playing the harp, very organic. It's not to pointillistic, precious and delicate, you can tell she's just really feeling it. Alice Coltrane is the queen. She is a person who even after her death is bringing the harp to a new audience which is really cool to watch especially lately because things are being reissued and her work is being talked about a lot. She really was an amazing musician and spiritual, beautiful person. I have a good friend Brandy who plays with her son Robby Coltrane and Brandy is kind of the torchbearer for Alice she plays a lot of her pieces. She was playing in L.A. and I got to drive Brandy to rehearsal, and she was like 'you're going to be driving Alice's harp!' you know her beautiful gold harp that John specially had made for her. I had it in my car and I was very freaked out. I was in L.A. traffic with Alice Coltrane's harp in the back. She let me play it for a minute and it was definitely infused with some magic.