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Ornette Coleman: An Innovator of the First Order, But Certainly No Messiah
by Richard J Salvucci
At the remove of sixty years, there is a temptation to say, “Ornette Coleman, so what?" His early music does not sound particularly out there. And by contemporary standards, it is not. The initial shock of Ornette Coleman in the mid 1950s wore off decades ago. Some of his compositions have passed into the standard repertoire. Coleman may have been a founding member of the Free Jazz Movement, but Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler among others, moved beyond abandoning Western ...
Continue ReadingOrnette Coleman: New York Is Now & Love Call Revisited
by Stefano Merighi
Verso la fine degli anni Sessanta, il jazz deve combattere una battaglia impari contro il mondo del nuovo rock, sviluppatosi dopo l'anno del flower power e dell'influsso dei nuovi gruppi inglesi negli USA. Il pubblico è attratto dalle insorgenti fusioni stilistiche--che Miles Davis intercetta con genialità--ed evita con indifferenza il mainstream e ancor più la durezza dell'avanguardia legata al free jazz. Anche la figura cristallina di Ornette Coleman non se la passa troppo bene, tra difficoltà discografiche e ...
Continue ReadingOrnette Coleman: Ornette At 12, Crisis To Man On The Moon, Revisited
by John Eyles
The re-release albums on Ezz-thetics, by jazz legends from the 1940s, '50s and '60s, have been widely praised, particularly for their sound quality which is invariably much improved compared to the originals or later rereleases. Another impressive aspect of these re-releases is the behind-the-scenes detective work which has tracked down rarities by some iconic musicians. One notable example of this is the three previously unreleased live recordings by the Albert Ayler Quintet, from their autumn 1966 European tour, which appeared ...
Continue ReadingA Life In Music
by Wulf Muller
The following is an excerpt from the Chapter “1996," from Wulf Müllers illustrated chronicle A Life In Music (Amazon Direct Publishing, 2022) Dee Dee Bridgewater performed three sold out nights at the glamorous and legendary Paris venue L'Olympia, with new signing to Verve France, singer Jeffery Smith, opening for her. Dee Dee's show was spectacular and really established her as a star in France. She had young trumpet player Roy Hargrove and saxophonist David Sanchez as guests ...
Continue ReadingOrnette Coleman: Ornette At 12 / Crisis
by Howard Mandel
Ornette Coleman, the musical savant who freed jazz and every other art form that cared to dispense with stifling conventions and stultifying pretense, recorded Ornette at 12 and Crisis at the height of the 1960s' countercultural creative promise and world-wide unrest. It was an era of citizens claiming hard-won freedoms as civil rights, of youthful energies fueling fast changes and expressive artistic innovations--but also of backlash, assassinations, inequalities, riots and war. The music Coleman and his band of ...
Continue ReadingOrnette Coleman: Genesis of Genius: The Contemporary Albums
by Jeff Kaliss
For many an Ornette Coleman devotee, devotion was pledged with the singular saxophonist's The Shape of Jazz to Come (Atlantic). It was recorded in May and released in November of 1959, and it's a matter of when in our life we caught up with it. For some of us, that's when we first felt liberated by jazz. That album, produced by Nesuhi Ertegun, remains a hard act to follow, even for Coleman himself. Or to precede. But “Hollywood ...
Continue ReadingThe Big O Meets Big Blue
by Patrick Burnette
Ornette Coleman and Blue Note—not exactly the chocolate and peanut butter of the jazz world, one might think, but for two productive years the avant-garde avatar toiled in the vineyards of the hard bop powerhouse. The label recently released Round Trip—a box set re-issuing the fruits of this odd collaboration—and the boys take a deep dive. Except for the collaboration with Jackie McLean, because that gives Mike PTSD. Playlist Discussion of Ornette Coleman's early career 2:45 Discussion of ...
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