Jazz Articles about Don Cherry

Don Cherry

by Peter Madsen
May 30, 2006

Back about fifteen years ago I had the great fortune of playing with one of the most innovative trumpeters and world music masters, the late Don Cherry. To this day I am touched by the memory of his personal and musical presence at our brief encounter. What I remember the most is his quiet intelligent personality as well as the totally organic way he played both the pocket trumpet and the doussn'gouni (an instrument from Mali that he often played). ...

Don Cherry: Where Is Brooklyn?

by Ollie Bivens
May 13, 2006

With the reissue of Where Is Brooklyn?, Blue Note completes a trilogy of Don Cherry releases (also including Complete Communion and Symphony for Improvisers) which up to now had only been available on CD in a limited edition Mosaic box set. Cherry initially came into wide prominence in jazz as a member of Ornette Coleman's landmark 1959-61 quartet.

Where Is Brooklyn features bassist Henry Grimes, drummer Ed Blackwell and tenor titan Pharoah Sanders. The five selections have no themes or ...

Don Cherry: Symphony for Improvisers

by Ollie Bivens
January 19, 2006

Exploding on the jazz scene in the late '50s as a member of Ornette Coleman's pioneering band, Don Cherry left the Coleman aggregation in '65 to pursue a solo career. This, his fifth date as a leader and his second album on Blue Note, was a continuation of the free jazz sonic explorations that made the Coleman band so groundbreaking. The thirty-year-old cornet and pocket trumpet player was beginning to step out from the long shadow of the controversial saxophonist. ...

The Humus of Don Cherry

by Clifford Allen
October 20, 2005

“If we're going to speak about words, we could talk about a word like 'aum.' Because you don't say the word 'aum,' you sing it. And you have to sing it where you use the 'a' as 'ah,' which is the throat. Then you're singing, sustaining the tone 'ah.' Then you go to the 'u,' and then you reach the 'm' and you've liberated the body. That's a word. In the Bible they speak of the Word. First there was ...

Don Cherry: Symphony for Improvisors

by Ty Cumbie
October 15, 2005

It is gratifying to read A.B. Spelling's original liner notes for Don Cherry's 1966 recording Symphony for Improvisers, the first sentence of which begins “The New Music is no longer new and goes on to point out the developments over the preceding ten years. Free jazz is still a powerful draw for musicians and still inspires indifference at best from most listeners. Perhaps this newly remastered CD from a high point of the genre's history will reel in a few ...

Don Cherry: Symphony For Improvisors

by Renato Wardle
August 23, 2005

Don Cherry Symphony For Improvisers Blue Note 2005 (1966)

By September of 1966, the so-called “free jazz" movement was in full swing. It had been nearly six years since Ornette Coleman's highly controversial landmark residency at the Five Spot. Cecil Taylor had recently been pushing the limits of jazz with records such as Unit Structures and Conquistador. Albert Ayler's watershed, Spiritual Unity, had already shown just how completely the bounderies of jazz ...

Don Cherry: Orient

by AAJ Staff
March 11, 2003

Don Cherry, who passed away in 1995 at age 59, was a world musician long before the term became fashionable. Two recent early '70s reissues - Orient and Blue Lake (both previously Japan-only releases), help to solidify Cherry as not only one of the greatest (pocket) trumpeters/cornetists that jazz has known, but also one of its most well-rounded musicians. His global approach and experimentations on Orient (1971), two live dates with separate trios, is supplemented through one ...