 Many of the artists involved in the making of this new music, variously called "free jazz", "the new thing", or "energy music", recorded for the Impulse!label.Ashley Kahn writes that several musicians, often those who had either played with or been influenced by John Coltrane, such as his widow Alice Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, and Leon Thomas, began exploring new thematic and musical ideas, often associated with non-western religious and musical traditions.