Alice Coltrane, the widow of jazz legend John Col Trane, is celebrating her 50th birthday. The pianist found her own sound: devotional and enigmatic music with traces of blues.

She began playing the harp, a gift from John, and the technique she developed with it. The Hindu tradition, she later explained, was one that best suited her search for a universalist spirituality. She left in December with Satchidananda on a five-week trip to India: swam in the Ganges, visited the Himalayas and made a pilgrimage to Taj Mahal.