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Ornette Coleman: The Complete Science Fiction Sessions
by David Adler
Listening to the first moments of “What Reason Could I Give," the lead-off track on this valuable reissue, one is reminded of Ornette Coleman's pervasive influence on present-day jazz composition. The expanded ensemble, the busy rhythms percolating underneath sustained chords and melodic figures, the dream-like vocals by Asha Puthli: all of it brims with the kind of tradition/anti-tradition dialectic found in much of today's best new music. This two-disc package includes not only 1971's Science Fiction (with two ...
Continue ReadingOrnette Coleman: Skies of America
by Derek Taylor
Jazz and Classical music have always been uneasy bedfellows and Third Stream pairings of the two have rarely, if ever, resulted in unqualified successes. The blurred boundaries between the genres are commonly drawn along the lines of improvisation; the assumption being that jazz is an improvised music and Classical composed. This convenient divider becomes immediately problematic in that Classical music, particularly in the case of modern strains, often employs improvisation too. The timely reissue of Coleman’s Skies of America points ...
Continue ReadingOrnette Coleman: Complete Science Fiction Sessions
by Derek Taylor
Before the arrival of this recent reissue Ornette Coleman's brief, but fertile stint for Columbia Records was spread across a hopelessly convoluted morass of LPs and CDs, import and domestic. The folks at Columbia, who have over the past few years re-hipped themselves to the wealth of music bursting the seams in their vaults, targeted their efforts toward cleaning up the mess and have done an admirable job. The resulting set, which gathers all of the material from a handful ...
Continue ReadingOrnette Coleman: Something Else!!!! - The Music Of Ornette Coleman
by AAJ Staff
Here it is: Ornette's first recording, containing his most conventional compositions, one ("The Blessing") written in 1951. Even so, it came only after a long period of struggle ("...most musicians didn't take to me; they said I didn't know the changes and was out of tune.") He was an elevator operator in an L.A. department store; he'd take the elevator to the top floor and practice for hours. He was about to return to Forth Worth when Red Mitchell heard ...
Continue ReadingOrnette Coleman: The Empty Foxhole
by Robert Spencer
Denardo Coleman, son of the free jazz master, is now forty years old and has been playing drums for thirty-four years. The virtuosity that he has developed over these years can be heard to best advantage on his father's two new albums of 1996, Sound Museum: Three Women and Sound Museum: Hidden Man. His playing has been fine through the years, as on James Blood Ulmer's 1978 Tales of Captain Black. The Empty Foxhole, however, dates from 1966, when the ...
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