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Ornette Coleman

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Coleman, Ornette

(1930–  ) jazz musician; born in Fort Worth, Texas. An iconoclastic saxophonist and composer, his experiments in free-form improvisation sharply divided the jazz establishment upon his emergence in 1959. Largely self-taught, he played in rhythm-and-blues bands before settling in Los Angeles in 1951, where he gradually formed a quartet of musicians who were receptive to his unorthodox ideas. He first recorded in 1958 and made his New York debut the following year. He made a series of important recordings in 1959–61 that shaped the direction of jazz for the next twenty years. A sporadic performing artist after the early 1960s, he occasionally led both a conventional jazz quartet and the rock band Prime Time, but turned increasingly to composition, producing several works for symphony orchestra in accordance with his "harmolodic theory."
The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.
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There are some conclusions here that will be challenged (calling Davis's Lost Quintet one of the "children of Ornette Coleman" is an eyebrow-raiser, for one).
He turned the writing of album-cover liner notes into an art, perfecting this craft for records by Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and even--in a side trip--Bob Dylan.
Having worked with a list of legends and luminaries, which we frankly haven't got room to print (but John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Stan Getz, Keith Jarrett, Chet Baker, George Benson, Stanley Turrentine, Joe Henderson and Herbie Hancock would be a few), Jack's current focus sees him composing and performing alongside Joe Lovano, Esperanza Spalding and Leo Genovese.
Reed's longtime producer, Hal Willner, and Paul Simon cited Reed's lifelong admiration of African-American music, from doo-wop to Ornette Coleman to Nicki Minaj.
Gibbs's arrangements are of his own Feelings & Things and Tennis Anyone?, and Ornette Coleman's Ramblin'.
After making a name for himself on the West Coast, Sanders moved to New York in 1962, where he worked with founding members of the city's avant-garde scene, including Ornette Coleman (who once called Sanders "probably the best tenor player in the world"), Don Cherry, and Billy Higgins.
In 1954, Cortez married jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman when she was twenty years old.
Jazz performer Ornette Coleman is associated with which instrument?
By emptying the gallery of what the press release refers to as "yesterday's answers" in the form of completed artifacts, "Tomorrow Is the Question?" (the title is borrowed from a 1959 album by Ornette Coleman) transformed the ordinary room into an arena for trial and error that positioned improvisational performance as an allegory for experimental thinking in general.
After playing shows supporting Ornette Coleman and Gang Gang Dance, they recorded their first album in Hayward's basement studio.
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