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Ornette Coleman (born March, 9, 1930) is a saxophonist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist who came to prominence in the late 50s by pioneering free jazz. At the start of his career, Coleman's uniorthodox playing, largely ignoring the structure of conventional jazz, made him somewhat of an outcast by those who simply believed him to be a poor musician. However, he was eventually signed and released his debut, Something Else!!!!, which helped inject blues back into jazz after bebop had removed nearly all its traces.
Coleman's debut was original, but it did not ...read more
Ornette Coleman (born March, 9, 1930) is a saxophonist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist who came to prominence in the late 50s by pioneering free jazz. At the start of his career, Coleman's uniorthodox playing, largely ignoring the structure of conventional jazz, made him somewhat of an outcast by those who simply believed him to be a poor musician. However, he was eventually signed and released his debut, Something Else!!!!, which helped inject blues back into jazz after bebop had removed nearly all its traces.
Coleman's debut was original, but it did not explore any new musical territory. In 1959, however, he placed himself at the forefront of the jazz world with arguably the first free jazz album ever recorded, The Shape of Jazz to Come. Completely abandoning chord structures and relying almost solely on improvisation, it indeed pointed to the future of jazz and soon bebop giants like Charles Mingus and particularly John Coltrane would experiment with this new type of music. Coleman furthered explored this new genre's capabilities with Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation, which featured, for the first time, an entire album devoted to improvised music. Mixing in solos with group improvisations, it took the foundations of his previous album and firmly cemented free jazz as a form of music.
After recording avant-garde jazz albums through the 60s and 70s, Coleman turned to electronic funk for the late 70s and 80s, in a manner not entirely unlike Miles Davis. Starting with Dancing In Your Head, Coleman began to mix jazz fusion with funk and his own avant-garde jazz, and soon adopted more electronic instruments in order to find new sounds.
Still active today (he even played Bonnaroo in 2007), Ornette Coleman remains one of the most important figures in jazz history and a master of the genre he helped invent. « hide |
Similar Bands: John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Eric Dolphy
Contributors: EStreetFan, Fort23, Hep Kat,
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