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Ornette Coleman: The Missing Years, 1968-1972
by Eric Miller
Among Ornette Coleman's periods of relative quiet, the turn of the 1960s into the 1970s may well be the most frustrating. More than three years of musical life--from the final Blue Note sessions of April-May 1968 to the release of Science Fiction on Columbia in 1972--remain shrouded in mystery and obscurity. Every recording made under Coleman's name during this period was done live; worse, all are either unavailable or unauthorized (to slightly varying degrees), forcing fans to hold out for ...
Continue ReadingFree Jazz
by C. Michael Bailey
Ornette Coleman Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation by the Ornette Coleman Double Quartet Atlantic 1961 Alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman's masterpiece, Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation by the Ornette Coleman Double Quartet, is one of the hinges of jazz evolution. As a musical hinge, Free Jazz, heard from this side of its development, is a bit of an anticlimax compared with the two-label, five album prelude to this point: Something Else!!!! (Contemporary, ...
Continue ReadingOrnette Coleman: This is Our Music
by C. Michael Bailey
Ornette ColemanThis is Our MusicAtlantic1961 This is Our Music is the militantly expressed jumping-off point for alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman on the way to the epochal Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation (Atlantic, 1961). Coleman picks up exactly where he left off on Change of the Century and never looks back. He keeps his working band mostly intact save for replacing drummer Billy Higgins with the like- wise sympathetic Ed Blackwell, who adds ...
Continue ReadingOrnette Coleman: Change Of The Century
by C. Michael Bailey
Ornette ColemanChange Of The CenturyAtlantic1959 Change Of The Century was an audacious album title, to say the least. On his second Atlantic release--and second with his most like-minded ensemble (trumpeter Don Cherry, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Billy Higgins)--alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman pushed the freedom principal farther. At the same time, he looked backward too for inspiration. Having eliminated the piano on his Contemporary release, Tomorrow Is The Question! (1959), Coleman opened ...
Continue ReadingOrnette Coleman: Tomorrow is the Question!
by C. Michael Bailey
Ornette ColemanTomorrow is the QuestionContemporary1959Shaking out of the contractual obligation forcing him to employ a pianist on his debut, Something Else!!!! (Contemporary, 1958), alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman dispensed with the instrument altogether on 1959's Tomorrow is the Question!, causing a bit of consternation on the part of the mainstream jazz media. This was Coleman's committed step forward toward a harmonically less restrictive sound, en route to the joyful chaos of Free Jazz ...
Continue ReadingOrnette Coleman: Something Else!!!!
by C. Michael Bailey
Ornette ColemanSomething Else!!!!Contemporary2011 (1958) Robert Louis Stevenson noted that, “The mark of a good action is that it appears inevitable in retrospect." The middle-to-late 1950s in jazz were populated with several “good actions," all considered inevitable evolutionary reactions to earlier genre, specifically swing and bebop--the latter the complex and elevated jazz style that had dominated the creative American musical structure the decade before, and, to some degree has done so since. ...
Continue ReadingOrnette Coleman: Quartet Reunion 1990
by AAJ Italy Staff
Come alcuni (o molti) ricorderanno, nell'aprile 1990 Reggio Emilia dedicò una rassegna in più giornate tutta centrata sulla figura di Ornette Coleman (che vi presentò fra l'altro anche la celebre Skies of America). Da quella storica infornata, ecco oggi emergere da qualche scaffale la registrazione (non immacolata, ma comunque più che accettabile, in quanto a resa sonora) del concerto del 24 aprile al Teatro Valli, protagonista il cosiddetto Original Quartet che già aveva effettuato un acclamato tour nell'autunno '87, sulle ...
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