View credits, reviews, tracks and shop for the 1972 Gatefold Vinyl release of World Galaxy on Discogs.

Had become a musical world unto herself by the time she issued, recorded in late 1971. With jazz-rock fusion taking over the mainstream and the terminal avant-garde heading over to Europe, stubbornly forged an insistent, ever-evolving brand of spiritual jazz that bore her own signature as much as it did her late husband's influence. On the two days in November when was recorded, chose drummer, bassist, violinist, saxophonist, and timpanist in addition to a string orchestra of 16 to help her realize her latest vision. Herself plays piano, harp, and organ on this date, sometimes within a single track, as she does on her glorious post-modal reworking of 'My Favorite Things.' This was a gutsy move, considering it was one of 's signature tunes, but has it firmly in hand as she moves from organ to harp to piano and back, turning the melody inside out wide enough for the strings to whip up an atmospheric texture that simultaneously evokes heaven and hell and skewers the prissy nature of the tune in favor of bent polyharmonics that allow the entire world of sound inside to play.

The jazz modalism presents on 'Galaxy Around Olodumare' is quickly undone by in his solo and reconstructed into polyphony by the string section; it's remarkable. The harp work on 'Galaxy in Turiya' ('s religious name) is among her most beautiful, creating her own wash of color and dynamic for the strings to fall like water from the sky into her mix. As colors shift and change, the rhythm section responds, and focuses them in the prism of 's textured harpistry. The album closes with another signature, 'A Love Supreme,' here given an out of this world treatment by the band with playing full force through the middle of both channels. There is a narration by 's guru inside it, a poem really, spoken by the great guru, which no doubt would have moved, but the real news is 's killer, funky breakbeat organ solo that covers the tune top to bottom in blues, in stark contrast to ' improvisation. This set may take some getting used to for some, but it's easily one of the strongest records ever released, and one of the finest moments in jazz from the early '70s.

Alice Coltrane is one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, with a sublime musical vision that encompasses jazz, blues, gospel, Indian classical, North African music, and European modernism. Although her achievement is now being recognised, for many years Coltrane was misunderstood and dismissed by many of jazz’s gatekeepers.

Some viewed her in the way many view Yoko Ono: responsible for the break-up of her husband John Coltrane’s classic quintet; a sexist and demonstrably untrue claim. Others simply didn’t get what her music was about, dismissing it as so much hippy twaddle. As the normally on-point Richard Cook writes in his Jazz Encyclopedia, 'Her albums of her own music often come across as soft-headed and incoherent rambling one wonders if she would have enjoyed any attention at all if she had remained plain Alice McCleod.'

Such wrong-headed attitudes are thankfully on the wane. Coltrane was hugely respected by the heavyweight musicians she worked with, who were clearly less hung up on genre boundaries than many critics. Her music has always attracted open-minded music fans - Journey In Satchidananda is one of the cult albums – but in recent years it has enjoyed a new lease of life, with Radiohead, Four Tet and Sunn 0))) among the acts paying homage. The Los Angeles beats & jazz community centred around her nephew Stephen Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, has played a key role in raising her profile, and there’s undoubtedly a heady whiff of Alice in Kamasi Washington’s symphonic jazz arrangements. She’s also a major influence on contemporary jazz innovators like Joshua Abrams and Amirtha Kidambi, who clearly respond to her unorthodox approach. Born in Detroit in 1937, the young Alice McLeod was a musical prodigy, learning piano from an early age, and playing organ in Mount Olive Baptist Church by the age of nine. Gospel remained a great love and its influence can be heard throughout her work.

In her teens, she discovered bebop through her older half-brother, the bassist Ernie Farrow, and was entranced. Before she was twenty, she had gigged with saxophonists Cannonball Adderley and Sonny Stitt. She later moved to Paris where she studied piano with the great Bud Powell.