Ornette Coleman

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 together in what Coleman calls compositional improvisation, while always keeping deeply in tune with the flow, direction and needs of their fellow players. In this process, harmony becomes melody becomes harmony. Ornette describes it as "Removing the caste system from sound." On a broader level, harmolodics equates with the freedom to be as you please, as long as you listen to others and work with them to develop your own individual harmony.

For his essential vision and innovation, Coleman has been rewarded by many accolades, including the MacArthur "Genius" Award, and an induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letter. an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Pennsylvania, the American Music Center Letter of Distinction, and the New York State Governor Arts Award.

But the path to his present universal acclaim has not always been smooth.

Born in a largely segregated Fort Worth, Texas on March 9, 1930, Coleman's father died when he was seven. His seamstress mother worked hard to buy Coleman his first saxophone when he was 14 years old. Teaching himself sight-reading from a how-to piano book, Coleman absorbed the instrument and began playing with local rhythm and blues bands.

In his search for a sound that expressed reality as he perceived it, Coleman knew he was not alone. The competitive cutting sessions that denoted 'bebop' were all about self-expression in the highest form. "I could play and sound like Charlie Parker note-for-note, but I was only playing it from method. So I tried to figure out where to go from there," Coleman said.

Los Angeles proved to be the laboratory for what came to be called free jazz. There began to gather around Ornette a core of players who would figure largely in his life: a lanky teenage trumpeter, Don Cherry and a cherubic double bass player with a pensive, muscular style named Charlie Haden, drummers Ed Blackwell and Billy Higgins also joined the intense exploratory rehearsals in which Coleman was honing his vocabulary on a plastic sax, despite the lack of live gigs.

But simply by persisting, Coleman's creativity attracted champions. Bebop bassist, Red Mitchell (an old associate of Cherry's) brought the saxophone player's to Contemporary Records' Lester Koenig, originally intending to sell him some of his compositions. After realizing the difficulty musicians were having in playing the music Koenig asked Coleman if he could play the tunes himself. The meeting led to the Coleman’s debut 1958 album, Something Else.

The energy and electricity that had been building around Ornette and his players exploded during a now legendary season that Coleman played at the Five Spot jazz club in New York in November, 1959. Intrigued by rumors of the unorthodox young Texan's approach, buzz preceded the shows and as the initial two weeks extended to a six-week run, the revolutionary Coleman quartet became the must-see event of the season.

And yet, as writer and long-time Coleman associate, Robert Palmer, observes in his notes to the Beauty Is A Rare Thing box set of the Atlantic years (Rhino/Atlantic), "The present day listener will most likely hear these pieces as well conceived and superbly realized works on their own terms and will again wonder what all the controversy could have been about."

Coleman soon began to study of the trumpet and violin expanding the scope of his always prolific composition to include string quartets, woodwind quintets and symphonic works. Coleman used a Guggenheim Foundation grant to write a symphony, Skies of America.

Coleman went on a journey to Morocco in 1973, to work with the Master Musicians of Jajouka in their mountain villages. Following he also visited villages in Nigeria. Soon upon his return Coleman created with a new sound that was a full frontal harmolodic attack, a double whammy of drums and electric bass, dubbed Prime Time.

Coleman’s 1986 collaboration with jazz-rock guitarist Pat Metheny, Song X led to a tour and a new audience. Ornette moved into the broader public consciousness in the late 80s by performing and recording with the Grateful Dead and their hippy virtuoso guitarist, Jerry Garcia. The affection and respect which Coleman and the late Garcia had for one another was captured in the sessions for 1988's Virgin Beauty (CBS/Portrait).

The new autonomy heralded a season in which Coleman began to reap consistent accolades for his continued adventures in music. He formed the Harmolodic Label and began an association with Polygram France. Over the course of the decade Harmolodic released a number of works beginning with Tone Dialing, on which a Bach prelude is rendered harmolodically.

One of the ultimate American accolades, the MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant, was awarded to Coleman in 1994. In general, rather than simple concerts, Coleman's performances had by now become big multimedia events that both reflected and impacted on the host town's community, lasting for several nights at a significant location.

Lincoln Center provided the backdrop for Civilization 1997. A four-night event at Avery Fisher Hall. It began with two nights of Kurt Masur conducting the New York Philharmonic together with Prime Time. Perhaps the most eagerly awaited aspect of all four nights was the first New York appearance in two decades of the Original Quartet, performing all new material. Hearing the familiar, still stimulating blend of Coleman, Haden and Higgins was an emotional experience for many listeners, who found in the depth of the players' empathy a yardstick of their own lives and the fulfillment of dreams they had when they first heard the Quartet shatter conceptions of music.

A metaphysician, philosopher and eternal student, Coleman continues to confound categorization. His Harmolodic world continues to expand along with the concepts of an artist beyond boundaries. "Most people think of me only as a saxophonist and as a jazz artist," he once stated, "but I want to be considered as a composer who could cross over all the borders."

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Ornette Coleman: Free Jazz to Ornette! Revisited

Read "Free Jazz to Ornette! Revisited" reviewed by Alberto Bazzurro

by Alberto Bazzurro
October 14, 2024

Che cosa si può dire ancora di un'opera che ha stravolto il corso del jazz, uno di quegli snodi dopo i quali--qui fin dal titolo--nulla può essere più come prima? Punti di svolta decisivi e ineludibili che cambiano il corso di un'arte, pietre miliari come Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in pittura, l'Ulysses di Joyce in letteratura, o più specificatamente in poesia Un coup de dés di Mallarmé? Nulla, appunto, perché tutto dev'essere per forza di cose già stato detto e scritto, ...

Album Review

Ornette Coleman: Free Jazz To Ornette! Revisited

Read "Free Jazz To Ornette! Revisited" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
August 2, 2024

For ezz-thetics' revisited series' fourth Ornette Coleman album, the label has ventured back further than any of its previous Coleman albums, to New York City in December 1960 and January 1961. Recorded at A&R Studios on Wednesday December 21st 1960 from 8pm to 12.30am, the Free Jazz session produced two pieces, the thirty-seven minute “Free Jazz" itself, which was issued in September 1961 on an Atlantic album entitled Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation By The Ornette Coleman Double Quartet, and ...

Album Review

Ornette Coleman: At The Golden Circle Stockholm Revisited

Read "At The Golden Circle Stockholm Revisited" reviewed by Stefano Merighi

by Stefano Merighi
August 1, 2024

Ritornare a certe “opere aperte" di Ornette, come questo notissimo concerto di Stoccolma della fine del 1965, significa ribadire l'alterità irriducibile del maestro texano, che sarà stato sì come si legge sempre nella manualistica mainstream l'inventore del free jazz eccetera, il killer della tradizione, il primitivo con il sax di plastica, ma soprattutto un mago dell'istinto, un poeta della musica come flusso chimico naturale, i cui esiti hanno sempre parlato all'ascoltatore con intenti inclusivi, puntando alla libertà del linguaggio come ...

Album Review

Ornette Coleman Trio: At The Golden Circle Stockholm Revisited

Read "At The Golden Circle Stockholm Revisited" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
October 31, 2023

As the ezz-thetics label has already released two of Ornette Coleman's Blue Note albums together on New York Is Now & Love Call Revisited, both recorded in April and May 1968, it was always in the cards that both volumes of At the Golden Circle Stockholm, recorded in December 1965, would not be far behind. Sure enough, here they are, both together on one disc with a running time of eighty minutes. That means this single disc includes all of ...

Multiple Reviews

Ornette Coleman: An Innovator of the First Order, But Certainly No Messiah

by Richard J Salvucci
September 20, 2023

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 ...

Album Review

Ornette Coleman: New York Is Now & Love Call Revisited

Read "New York Is Now & Love Call Revisited" reviewed by Stefano Merighi

by Stefano Merighi
July 13, 2023

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 ...

Album Review

Ornette Coleman: Ornette At 12, Crisis To Man On The Moon, Revisited

Read "Ornette At 12, Crisis To Man On The Moon, Revisited" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
April 6, 2023

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 ...

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Ornette Coleman

Source: Michael Ricci
March 9, 2023

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 ...
read more

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Ornette Coleman

Source: Michael Ricci
March 9, 2022

All About Jazz is celebrating Ornette Coleman's birthday today!

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Ornette Coleman

Source: Michael Ricci
March 9, 2021

All About Jazz is celebrating Ornette Coleman's birthday today!

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Ornette Coleman

Source: Michael Ricci
March 9, 2020

All About Jazz is celebrating Ornette Coleman's birthday today!

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Ornette Coleman

Source: Michael Ricci
March 9, 2019

All About Jazz is celebrating Ornette Coleman's birthday today!

Place our Musician of the Day ...
read more

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Ornette Coleman

Source: Michael Ricci
March 9, 2018

All About Jazz is celebrating Ornette Coleman's birthday today!

Place our Musician of the Day ...
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Video / DVD

The Free Soul of Ornette

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
March 8, 2018

Abstraction came late to jazz. New York's abstract expressionism art movement emerged in the late 1940s and flourished throughout the 1950s. By contrast, free jazz didn't coalesce until the late 1950s, though there were inklings of the style in the music of Lee Konitz in the late 1940s and early '50s. Not until alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman and his sidemen did free jazz begin to become a jazz genre in 1959. While the music can be difficult for listeners accustomed ...
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Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Ornette Coleman

Source: Michael Ricci
March 9, 2017

All About Jazz is celebrating Ornette Coleman's birthday today!

Place our Musician of the Day ...
read more

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Ornette Coleman

Source: Michael Ricci
March 9, 2016

All About Jazz is celebrating Ornette Coleman's birthday today!

Place our Musician of the Day ...
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Opinion

Ornette Coleman, Traditionalist

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
June 27, 2015

There will be a funeral service for the saxophonist, composer, bandleader and iconoclast Ornette Coleman in Manhattan at 11 o’clock tomorrow morning, June 27. Coleman died on June 11 at the age of 85. Rifftides noted his passing that day. The service at The Riverside Church, between W. 122 St. and W. 120 St., will be open to the public. Thoughts of Coleman took me to a day in the 1960s not long after the release of his album Free ...
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