Ornette Coleman | |
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 Coleman at the Enjoy Jazz Festival inHeidelberg, 2008 | |
| Background information | |
| Born | Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman (1930-03-09)March 9, 1930 Fort Worth, Texas, U.S. |
| Died | June 11, 2015(2015-06-11) (aged 85) Manhattan,New York City, U.S. |
| Genres | |
| Occupations |
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| Instruments | |
| Years active | 1940s–2015 |
| Labels | |
Spouse | |
Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman (March 9, 1930 – June 11, 2015)[1] was an Americanjazz saxophonist, trumpeter, violinist, and composer. He is best known as a principal founder of thefree jazz genre, a term derived from his 1960 albumFree Jazz: A Collective Improvisation. His pioneering works often abandoned theharmony-based composition,tonality, chord changes, and fixed rhythm found in earlier jazz idioms.[2] Instead, Coleman emphasized an experimental approach toimprovisation rooted in ensemble playing andblues phrasing.[3] Thom Jurek ofAllMusic called him "one of the most beloved and polarizing figures in jazz history," noting that while "now celebrated as a fearless innovator and a genius, he was initially regarded by peers and critics as rebellious, disruptive, and even a fraud."[3]
Born and raised inFort Worth, Texas, Colemantaught himself to play the saxophone when he was a teenager.[1] He began his musical career playing in localR&B andbebop groups, and eventually formed his own jazz group in Los Angeles, featuring members such asEd Blackwell,Don Cherry,Charlie Haden, andBilly Higgins. In November 1959, his quartet began a controversial residency at theFive Spot jazz club in New York City and he released the influential albumThe Shape of Jazz to Come, his debut LP onAtlantic Records. Coleman's subsequent Atlantic releases in the early 1960s would profoundly impact the direction of jazz in that decade, and his compositions "Lonely Woman" and "Broadway Blues" became genre standards that are cited as important early works in free jazz.[4]
In the mid 1960s, Coleman left Atlantic for labels such asBlue Note andColumbia Records, and began performing with his young sonDenardo Coleman on drums. He explored symphonic compositions with his 1972 albumSkies of America, featuring theLondon Symphony Orchestra. In the mid-1970s, he formed the groupPrime Time and explored electricjazz-funk and his concept ofharmolodic music.[3] In 1995, Coleman and his son Denardo founded theHarmolodic record label. His 2006 albumSound Grammar received thePulitzer Prize for Music, making Coleman the second jazz musician ever to receive the honor.[5]
Coleman was born Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman on March 9, 1930, inFort Worth, Texas,[6] where he was raised.[7][8][9] He attendedI.M. Terrell High School in Fort Worth, where he participated in band until he was dismissed for improvising duringJohn Philip Sousa's march "The Washington Post". He began performingR&B andbebop on tenor saxophone, and formed The Jam Jivers withPrince Lasha andCharles Moffett.[9]
Eager to leave town, he accepted a job in 1949 with aSilas Green from New Orleans traveling show and then with touring rhythm and blues shows. After a show inBaton Rouge, Louisiana, he was assaulted and his saxophone was destroyed.[10]
Coleman subsequently switched to alto saxophone, first playing it in New Orleans after the Baton Rouge incident; the alto would remain his primary instrument for the rest of his life. He then joined the band ofPee Wee Crayton and traveled with them to Los Angeles. He worked at various jobs in Los Angeles, including as an elevator operator, while pursuing his music career.[11]
Coleman found like-minded musicians in Los Angeles, such asEd Blackwell,Bobby Bradford,Don Cherry,Charlie Haden,Billy Higgins, andCharles Moffett.[3][12] Thanks to the intercession of friends and a successful audition, Ornette signed his first recording contract with LA-basedContemporary Records,[13] which allowed him to sell the tracks from his debut album,Something Else!!!! (1958), with Cherry, Higgins,Walter Norris, andDon Payne.[14] During the same year he briefly belonged to a quintet led byPaul Bley that performed at a club in New York City (that band is recorded onLive at the Hilcrest Club 1958).[3] By the timeTomorrow Is the Question! was recorded soon after with Cherry, bassistsPercy Heath andRed Mitchell, and drummerShelly Manne, the jazz world had been shaken up by Coleman's alien music. Some jazz musicians called him a fraud, while conductorLeonard Bernstein praised him.[12]
In 1959,Atlantic Records released Coleman's third studio album,The Shape of Jazz to Come. According to music critic Steve Huey, the album "was a watershed event in the genesis of avant-garde jazz, profoundly steering its future course and throwing down a gauntlet that some still haven't come to grips with."[15]Jazzwise listed it at number three on their list of the 100 best jazz albums of all time in 2017.[16]
Coleman's quartet received a long and sometimes controversial engagement at theFive Spot Café in Manhattan. Leonard Bernstein,Lionel Hampton, and theModern Jazz Quartet were impressed and offered encouragement. Hampton asked to perform with the quartet; Bernstein helped Haden obtain a composition grant from theJohn Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. A youngLou Reed followed Coleman's quartet around New York City.[17]Miles Davis said that Coleman was "all screwed up inside",[18][19] although he later became a proponent of Coleman's innovations;[20]Dizzy Gillespie remarked of Coleman that “I don’t know what he’s playing, but it’s not jazz."[17]
Coleman's early sound was due in part to his use of aplastic saxophone; he had purchased it in Los Angeles in 1954 because he was unable to afford a metal saxophone at the time.[9]
On his Atlantic recordings, Coleman's sidemen were Cherry on cornet orpocket trumpet; Charlie Haden,Scott LaFaro, and thenJimmy Garrison on bass; and Higgins orEd Blackwell on drums. Coleman's complete recordings for the label were collected on the box setBeauty Is a Rare Thing in 1993.[21]
In 1960, Coleman recordedFree Jazz: A Collective Improvisation, which featured a double quartet, including Don Cherry andFreddie Hubbard on trumpet,Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet, Haden and LaFaro on bass, and both Higgins and Blackwell on drums.[22] The album was recorded in stereo, with a reed/brass/bass/drums quartet isolated in each stereo channel.Free Jazz was, at 37 minutes, the longest recorded continuous jazz performance at the time[23] and was one of Coleman's most controversial albums.[24] In the January 18, 1962, issue ofDown Beat magazine, Pete Welding gave the album five stars while John A. Tynan rated it zero stars.[25]
While Coleman had intended "free jazz" as simply an album title,free jazz was soon considered a new genre; Coleman expressed discomfort with the term.[26]
After the Atlantic period, Coleman's music became more angular and engaged with theavant-garde jazz which had developed in part around his innovations.[21] After his quartet disbanded, he formed a trio withDavid Izenzon on bass andCharles Moffett on drums, and began playing trumpet and violin in addition to the saxophone. His friendship withAlbert Ayler influenced his development on trumpet and violin, with an unorthodox self-taught style. Charlie Haden sometimes joined this trio to form a two-bass quartet.
In 1966, Coleman signed withBlue Note and released the two-volume live albumAt the "Golden Circle" Stockholm, featuring Izenzon and Moffett.[27] Later that year, he recordedThe Empty Foxhole with his ten year-old sonDenardo Coleman and Haden;[28]Freddie Hubbard andShelly Manne regarded Denardo's appearance on the album as an ill-advised piece of publicity.[29][30] Denardo later became his father's primary drummer in the late 1970s.
Coleman formed another quartet. Haden, Garrison, andElvin Jones appeared, andDewey Redman joined the group, usually on tenor saxophone. On February 29, 1968, Coleman's quartet performed live withYoko Ono at theRoyal Albert Hall, and a recording from their rehearsal was subsequently included on Ono's 1970 albumYoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band as the track "AOS".[31]
He explored his interest in string textures onTown Hall, 1962, culminating in the 1972 albumSkies of America with theLondon Symphony Orchestra.
Coleman, like Miles Davis before him, soon took to playing with electric instruments. The 1976 albumDancing in Your Head, Coleman's first recording with the group which later became known asPrime Time, prominently featured two electric guitarists. While this marked a stylistic departure for Coleman, the music retained aspects of what he calledharmolodics.
Coleman's 1980s albums with Prime Time such asVirgin Beauty andOf Human Feelings continued to use rock and funk rhythms in a style sometimes calledfree funk.[32][33]Jerry Garcia played guitar on three tracks onVirgin Beauty: "Three Wishes", "Singing in the Shower", and "Desert Players". Coleman joined theGrateful Dead on stage in 1993 during "Space" and stayed for "The Other One", "Stella Blue",Bobby Bland's "Turn on Your Lovelight", and the encore "Brokedown Palace".[34][35]
In December 1985, Coleman and guitaristPat Metheny recordedSong X.
In 1990, the city ofReggio Emilia, Italy, held a three-day "Portrait of the Artist" festival in Coleman's honor, in which he performed with Cherry, Haden, and Higgins. The festival also presented performances of his chamber music andSkies of America.[36] In 1991, Coleman played on the soundtrack ofDavid Cronenberg's filmNaked Lunch; the orchestra was conducted byHoward Shore.[37][38] Coleman released four records in 1995 and 1996, and for the first time in many years worked regularly with piano players (Geri Allen andJoachim Kühn).
Two 1972 Coleman recordings, "Happy House" and "Foreigner in a Free Land", were used inGus Van Sant's 2000Finding Forrester.[39]
In September 2006, Coleman released the albumSound Grammar. Recorded live inLudwigshafen, Germany, in 2005, it was his first album of new material in ten years. It won the 2007Pulitzer Prize for music, making Coleman only the second jazz musician (afterWynton Marsalis) to win the prize.[40]
Jazz pianistJoanne Brackeen stated in an interview withMarian McPartland that Coleman mentored her and gave her music lessons.[41]
Coleman married poetJayne Cortez in 1954. The couple divorced in 1964.[42] They had one son,Denardo, born in 1956.[43]
Coleman died ofcardiac arrest in Manhattan on June 11, 2015, aged 85.[1] His funeral was a three-hour event with performances and speeches by several of his collaborators and contemporaries.[44]
McClintic Sphere, a character inThomas Pynchon's 1963 novelV., is modeled on Coleman andThelonious Monk.[52][53][54]
Ornette Coleman since March 19, 1930, when he was born in Fort Worth, Texas
Ornette Coleman, born in Fort Worth, Texas, on March 19, 1930
In Thomas Pynchon's novel V. there is a character named McClintic Sphere, who plays an alto saxophone of hand-carved ivory (Coleman's was made of white plastic) at a club called the V Note.
Of all the ink spilled on Coleman's impact, perhaps the most memorable came from Thomas Pynchon's 1963 debut novel, V., in which the character McClintic Sphere (with a last name nodding to Thelonious Monk's middle name) sets the jazz world on end at a club called the V-Note.
In Thomas Pynchon's 1963 novel 'V.', a thinly veiled character named McClintic Sphere appears, playing a 'white ivory' saxophone at the 'V Spot.' Pynchon's wonderfully terse parody of the portentous debate around Coleman's music is as follows: 'He plays all the notes Bird missed,' somebody whispered in front of Fu. Fu went silently through the motions of breaking a beer bottle on the edge of the table, jamming it into the speaker's back and twisting.
Media from Commons
Quotations from Wikiquote
Ornette Coleman onBandcampOrnette Coleman discography atDiscogsOrnette Coleman discography atMusicBrainz
