Alice Coltrane

Commissioner and Creative Director for an hour long visual album of intense spiritual vibrations celebrating the re-release of Alice Coltrane’s seminal work, Kirtan : Turiya Sings

Turiya is short for Turiyasangitananda, the Hindu term for a female religious teacher. Alice wrote and recorded this music for her spiritual community and the followers of the Ashram she led. Created as a vessel for sonic healing this music was not intended to entertain. This is devotional music, intended to foster meditation and deep spiritual connections, enlightenment, higher vibrations, higher consciousness and peace.

I envisioned a virtual temple, a meditation space with no barriers. A space like her Ashram, where anyone could enter free of charge and experience the deep sonic healing this music was intended to bring.

The hour long film is structured around the practice of creating an altar for personal prayer and the contemplation of spiritually charged objects to calm and focus the mind during meditation. I wanted the movement to be as slow and captivating as a sunset. At first it seems nothing is changing but in time you realize everything is changing, everything is always changing.

I was especially honored by the support from Alice’s children, Ravi and Michelle, who not only blessed our project but generously shared personal photographs of their mother to display on the central altar. The energy on set was somehow both serene and electric with energy, a case study in the power of applying a sense of spiritual devotion to image making.