Latest Release
- The Shape of Jazz to Come · 1959
- Tomorrow Is The Question! · 1959
- Change of the Century · 1960
- Something Else!!!!: The Music Of Ornette Coleman · 1988
- The Shape of Jazz to Come · 1959
- The Shape of Jazz to Come · 1959
- The Shape of Jazz to Come · 1959
- Change of the Century · 1960
- The Shape of Jazz to Come · 1959
- Love Call · 1968
Essential Albums
- Of all the striking jazz innovations that coalesced in the year 1959, Ornette Coleman’s was the most radical. Miles Davis streamlined chord progressions and carved out room for melodic space on Kind of Blue. John Coltrane raised the bar on virtuosity with the relentless tempo and leaping key changes of Giant Steps. But Texas-born alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman eschewed conventional harmony and form altogether. And with The Shape of Jazz to Come, he began a stint with Atlantic Records that remains one of jazz’s grandest achievements. (The Atlantic years are compiled on Beauty Is a Rare Thing.) He also debuted one of the most expressive and atypical jazz quartets of all time, with Don Cherry on pocket trumpet, Charlie Haden on bass, and Billy Higgins on drums. “Coleman and Cherry may relate to the emotion, the pitch, the rhythm, the melody of a theme, without relating to ‘chords’ or bar divisions,” wrote the late critic Martin Williams in his liner notes. The alert 4/4 meter and walking bass of modern mainstream jazz was still often present, but during solos there might be no form at all—just interplay and creative exchange in the moment, a modality that later came to be called “time, no changes.” Framing these improvisations were Coleman’s inescapably singable melodies, from the captivating wail of the opening “Lonely Woman” to the quizzical calm of “Peace.” The melodies, or “heads” in jazz parlance, were usually voiced in unison: alto sax and trumpet, in the bebop manner. But the attack was rawer, the articulation more gestural and imperfect, the phrases wildly unpredictable (listen to the disorienting stop-start structures of “Focus on Sanity” and “Congeniality,” for instance). Coleman’s music arguably sparked the “free jazz” movement (named after the title of his 1961 epic, also on Atlantic). Yet the sound, at its heart, always conveyed what Williams called “a deep and personal feeling for the blues which is unmistakable.” Indeed, in its blues flavor, even harking back to the field hollers and folklore at the root of black music, Coleman’s jazz might have been the most traditional of all. His profound impact on others, from Coltrane to Pat Metheny and countless players of today, is everywhere apparent. The Shape of Jazz to Come was a provocative title back in 1959, but Coleman more than made good on the claim.
Artist Playlists
- Free your mind with these revolutionary jazz grooves.
- Funk-rock exultation, classical modernism, and other experiments.
- 2016
About Ornette Coleman
Few figures have altered the course of jazz—and music in general—as much as saxophonist, composer, bandleader, and thinker Ornette Coleman, who famously rejected harmony-based conceptions in order to allow his melodic ideas to drive his work. He is widely considered the creator of free jazz. Born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1930, Coleman gravitated to R&B and bebop as a teenager, but early on his unorthodox musical ideas caused trouble, including physical attacks, so in 1953 he settled in Los Angeles, where he soon found sympathetic bandmates in double bassist Charlie Haden, trumpeter Don Cherry, and drummer Billy Higgins. Coleman’s bluesy compositions sparkled with melodic vitality, embracing the rhythmic vocabulary of bebop, but his disinterest in conventional harmony rankled musicians and listeners in a way that’s hard to comprehend these days. With his third album The Shape of Jazz to Come, released in 1959 by Atlantic Records, he gave his first performances in New York City, where he soon moved. In 1960 he recorded Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation, a single piece played by a double quartet using only simple fanfare-like themes. While Coleman opened the floodgates of free expression in improvised music, he moved on, working with various ensembles throughout the 1960s, expanding his palette with violin and trumpet, and helping to establish the agency of jazz musicians to earn greater fees by boycotting New York’s club system. In the 1970s he wrote and recorded the orchestral piece Skies of America and formed an electric band, Prime Time, which collided his ideas with rock and funk. Coleman continued to record and perform publicly, while generously working with up-and-coming musicians in his home, until his death in 2015 from a heart attack at age 85.
- HOMETOWN
- Fort Worth, TX, United States
- BORN
- March 9, 1930
- GENRE
- Jazz