In “Cosmic Music: The Life, Art, and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane ,” out March 3 through Da Capo Books, veteran music journalist Andy Beta tells the full life story of this highly influential jazz artist for the first time. Drawing on dozens of new interviews and extensive archival research, Beta shows how Coltrane developed her unique sound and spiritual practice, both before and after the 1967 death of her husband John . By the end of the 1960s, she was spending a lot of time at the