It seems like a lifetime ago that we last heard something new from Alice Coltrane on record. Make that 24 years, to be exact (1980's Transfiguration on Warner Bros. which was recorded live in 1978). Her son Ravi Coltrane was 15 years old at the time of that release. Now 39 and a father himself (his son William Narayan Coltrane -- Alice's grandson -- is now five), Ravi has made significant strides in his own career. A highly regarded player, composer, and bandleader in his own right as well as a label head for his RKM Records, he has accomplished a great deal since picking up the tenor saxophone in 1986 and getting his feet wet with the Elvin Jones Jazz Machine in the early '90s. And yet, there is one goal that had eluded Ravi throughout his burgeoning career - a serious recording project with his mother.Translinear Light, which marks the triumphant return of Alice Coltrane to the recording scene, is the realization of that dream.

Says Ravi, who produced this rare mother-son collaboration, "I feel more proud and more happy about this than any musical project that I've been involved in."

The seeds of this remarkable recording were planted on June 14, 1998 when Alice Coltrane emerged from her jazz retirement to perform in concert with Ravi and his band at Town Hall in New York, as the first half of a special generation-spanning program that concluded with Ravi Shankar (for whom Ravi Coltrane was named) and his daughter Anoushka. That appearance by Alice with Ravi was hailed by critics and fans alike as a major triumph, spurring notions that the pianist-organist and widow of John Coltrane was indeed on top of her game and still very much a creative force to be reckoned with. And yet, her priorities clearly lay elsewhere. As Ravi explains, "To hear someone who still has all of this beautiful music to offer and who chooses not to do it on a professional basis anymore is kind of shocking to some people. I think it's hard for a lot of people to understand but the professional 'jazz life' was something that she felt she had done and she was ready to do something else.