All About Jazz is celebrating Ornette Coleman's birthday today!
Early on in his career, alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman, recorded an album entitled, The Shape of Jazz To Come. It might have seemed like an expression of youthful arrogance- Coleman was 29 at the time- but actually, the title was prophetic. Coleman is the creator of a concept of music called “harmolodic," a musical form which is equally applicable as a life philosophy. The richness of harmolodics derives from the unique interaction between the players. Breaking out of the prison bars of rigid meters and conventional harmonic or structural expectations, harmolodic musicians improvise equally... Read more.
