Ornette Coleman Biography
The preeminent pioneer in the development of free jazz, Ornette Coleman is as controversial as he is influential. The veteran alto saxophonist—whose crying, wailing sound is one of the most identifiable in jazz—developed an unconventional approach to harmony and chord progression, one far looser than that employed by most bebop performers, and far less concerned with formal chorus structures. In the decades since, he’s retained his musical edge, continuing to venture into uncharted musical territory on a regular basis.
Taking his initial jazz inspiration from Charlie Parker, the Fort Worth, Texas-born Coleman began playing bebop and R&B on alto and tenor sax in his teens; alto would become his main instrument. He performed with R&B bands in his home state, but his unorthodox approach tended to alienate his bandmates and audiences. In the early ’50s, Coleman traveled with Pee Wee Crayton’s band to Los Angeles, where he met several musicians who shared his ideas, and found an early supporter and collaborator in pianist Paul Bley. But it wasn’t until 1958 that Coleman was able to assemble a group of musicians who possessed the skills, and the inclination, to play the music he envisioned. That year, he led his first sessions for the Contemporary label, with a group that included trumpeter Don Cherry and drummer Billy Higgins, who would remain frequent Coleman collaborators in the years to come.
An extended engagement at the Five Spot in New York brought Coleman’s radical approach to national attention, and quickly polarized the opinions of audiences, critics and musicians. In 1959, Coleman recorded the first of a series of seminal albums with a quartet including Cherry, Higgins and bassist Charlie Haden. Those releases would exercise a powerful influence upon numerous jazz players of the period, notably John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy. The title of Coleman’s 1960 LP Free Jazz was soon applied by critics to describe his style of music. Although Coleman disagreed with the tag, it became the label for a subgenre when a new wave of Coleman-influenced players followed his example.
In the 1960s, Coleman applied his ideas to trumpet and violin, and explored those instruments on some 1965 recordings; during the same period, he experimented with performing with strings. He embraced new musical challenges in the ’70s, embracing the jazz avant-garde that had been inspired by his own innovations. In 1972, Coleman released his first symphonic work, Skies Of America, although he had written several unrecorded orchestral pieces previously. He also began recording with electric instruments, forming the sprawling seven-piece Prime Time with drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson and bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma. By then, Coleman had started calling his style harmolodics, stressing the music’s equal emphasis on harmony, melody and rhythm. In the ’80s, ’90s and ’00s, Coleman collaborated with Pat Metheny and Jerry Garcia, periodically reunited with members of his original quartet, and made guest appearances on albums by such non-jazz artists as Lou Reed, Eddy Grant, Bruce Hornsby and Joe Henry.
Recent Comments