Jazz Articles about Ornette Coleman

Free to A Good Home

by Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius
August 17, 2005

Suppose you woke up tomorrow morning (around 7am, but you hit the snooze till about 7:30, before finally getting up to make some coffee), and found that all the old rules of music no longer applied. Notes no longer had to have any relationship with chords, chords didn't have to relate to keys, time was no longer measured in steady, even beats, and it wasn't even necessary to play real instruments.

You may think that you have gone completely insane. ...

1959: A Great Year in Jazz

by Geoff Barber
October 27, 2004

My father really enjoys wine. We can go to a restaurant and he will talk to the waiter about wine for what seems like an eternity. The conversation normally revolves around the year a certain wine was fermented. He will settle on a year and enjoy a couple glasses with his meal. For the life of me, I could never understand the importance of the year of a glass of wine. Wine is wine: you order it, you drink it ...

Ornette Coleman Ouartet In Philadelphia

by AAJ Staff
September 20, 2004

The appearance of the Ornette Coleman Quartet at Verizon Hall in Philly's state-of-the-art Kimmel Center was his first performance in the City Of Brotherly Love since 1988.

It was both a significant event and an artistic achievement of towering magnitude. The Coleman band, playing before a crowded and enthusiastic but not-quite-full house, let loose with a set of powerful, even visionary, jazz.

Regrettably, Ornette made no announcements of the names of the compositions, but the second song sounded a lot ...

The Ornette Coleman Quartet: Ornette!

by Chris M. Slawecki
May 18, 2004

Saxophonist Coleman recorded Ornette! about a month after his milestone Free Jazz sessions, retaining bassist Scott LaFaro, drummer Ed Blackwell, and the amazing Don Cherry on pocket trumpet. Four tracks, each titled with an acronym, from the original 1962 release are supplemented by a fifth, “Proof Readers,” for this reissue.

Ornette! uniquely blends musical tradition and revolution. Most arrangements sound almost conventional now, with melody statements leading into and out of each piece. Coleman honks out a surprising ...

Ornette Coleman Quartet

by AAJ Staff
March 29, 2004

Hill Auditorium Ann Arbor, MI March 19, 2004

Ornette Coleman’s acoustic jazz presentation was functional simplicity -- two basses and drum set creating a tapestry of sound that he’d play endless melodies upon.

The ensemble which performed an uninterrupted (no intermission) 10 piece and single encore set Friday evening had the poise and sonic balance of a string quartet imbued with the deeply creative, highly sophisticated shape shifting instrumental relationships to harmony, melody and rhythm Coleman’s ...

Ornette Coleman is Still the Future of Jazz

by AAJ Staff
December 12, 2003

Most of us would agree that Ornette Coleman is an important musician, a significant innovator as a saxophonist and a composer. I want to open a forum to re-evaluate Coleman in that I think he is the most significant force in jazz since Charlie Parker, and the fact that Coleman's innovations are widely misunderstood gets in the way of being able to really hear his music and evaluate his importance.

The common conception of Ornette's music, I think, is that ...

Ornette Coleman: At the Golden Circle Vol. 1 & Vol. 2

by C. Andrew Hovan
February 1, 2002

Maybe it was the supportive European crowd, largely acknowledged as a sympathetic bunch when it comes to American jazz, or the fact that innovator and iconoclast Ornette Coleman, after a two-year hiatus, was in full sprint at the end of 1965. Regardless of the extraneous factors, some of the alto saxophonist's most joyous and musically together moments can be heard among the 15 performances captured at the Golden Circle in Stockholm.

Breathing as one, Coleman's trio with bassist David Izenzon ...