Alice Coltrane, the jazz musician who was closely linked with the music of her late husband, legendary US saxophonist John Coltrane, has died at the age of 69, a newspaper reported.
Citing a spokesman for the family, The Los Angeles Times newspaper said Coltrane died Friday at West Hills Hospital and Medical Center in West Hills of respiratory failure.
She had been in frail health for some time.
Though known for her contributions to jazz and early New Age music, Coltrane, a convert to Hinduism, was also a significant spiritual leader and founded the Vedantic Center, a spiritual commune now located in the Los Angeles area, the paper said.
For much of the last nearly 40 years, Alice Coltrane was also the keeper of her husband's musical legacy, managing his archive and estate.
Her husband, one of the pivotal figures in the history of jazz, died of liver disease on July 17, 1967, at the age of 40.
A pianist and organist, Alice Coltrane was noted for her astral compositions and for bringing the harp onto the jazz bandstand, the paper said.
Her last performances came in the fall, when she participated in an abbreviated tour that included stops in New York and San Francisco, playing with her saxophonist son, Ravi, according to the report.
She was born Alice McLeod in Detroit on August 27, 1937, into a family with deep musical roots.
Alice began her musical education at age seven, learning classical piano, The Times said.
Her early musical career included performances in church groups as well as in top-flight jazz ensembles led by Lateef, guitarist Kenny Burrell and saxophonist Lucky Thompson.
After studying jazz piano briefly in Paris, she moved to New York and joined the quartet of Terry Gibbs.
"As fascinating -- and influential -- as her later music was, it tended to obscure the fact that she had started out as a solid, bebop-oriented pianist," critic Don Heckman told The Times Saturday. "I remember hearing, and jamming with, her in the early '60s at photographer W. Eugene Smith's loft in Manhattan. At that time she played with a brisk, rhythmic style immediately reminiscent of Bud Powell."
She met her future husband in 1963 while playing an engagement with Gibbs' group at Birdland in New York City.
Early albums under her name, including "A Monastic Trio," and "Ptah the El Daoud," were greeted with critical praise, the paper said. Her last recording, "Translinear Light," came in 2004.