Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman (March 9, 1930 – June 11, 2015)
was an American
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...
saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter, and composer known as a principal founder of the
free jazz
Free jazz is an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventions, such as regular tempos, tones, and chord changes. Musicians duri ...
genre, a term derived from his 1960 album ''
Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation''. His pioneering performances often abandoned the chordal and
harmony-based structure found in
bebop
Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early-to-mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, instrumen ...
, instead emphasizing a jarring and
avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
approach to
improvisation.
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...
called him "one of the most important (and controversial) innovators of the
jazz avant-garde".
Born in
Fort Worth, Texas
Fort Worth is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Texas and the 13th-largest city in the United States. It is the county seat of Tarrant County, covering nearly into four other counties: Denton, Johnson, Parker, and Wise. Accord ...
, Coleman began his musical career playing in local
R&B and
bebop
Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early-to-mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, instrumen ...
groups, and eventually formed his own group in Los Angeles featuring members such as
Ed Blackwell
Edward Joseph Blackwell (October 10, 1929 – October 7, 1992) was an American jazz drummer born in New Orleans, Louisiana, known for his extensive, influential work with Ornette Coleman.
Biography
Blackwell's early career began in New Orleans ...
,
Don Cherry
Donald Stewart Cherry (born February 5, 1934) is a Canadian former ice hockey player, coach, and television commentator. Cherry played one game in the National Hockey League (NHL) with the Boston Bruins, and later coached the team for five se ...
,
Charlie Haden
Charles Edward Haden (August 6, 1937 – July 11, 2014) was an American jazz double bass player, bandleader, composer and educator whose career spanned more than 50 years. In the late 1950s, he was an original member of the ground-breaking ...
, and
Billy Higgins
Billy Higgins (October 11, 1936 – May 3, 2001) was an American jazz drummer. He played mainly free jazz and hard bop.
Biography
Higgins was born in Los Angeles, California, United States. Higgins played on Ornette Coleman's first records, ...
. In 1959, he released the controversial album ''
The Shape of Jazz to Come
''The Shape of Jazz to Come'' is the third album by jazz musician Ornette Coleman. Released on Atlantic Records in 1959, it was his debut on the label and his first album featuring the working quartet including himself, trumpeter Don Cherry, bass ...
'' and began a long residency at the
Five Spot
5 is a number, numeral, and glyph.
5, five or number 5 may also refer to:
* AD 5, the fifth year of the AD era
* 5 BC, the fifth year before the AD era
Literature
* ''5'' (visual novel), a 2008 visual novel by Ram
* ''5'' (comics), an awa ...
jazz club in New York City. His 1960 album ''Free Jazz'' would profoundly influence the direction of jazz in that decade. Beginning in the mid-1970s, Coleman formed the group
Prime Time and explored
funk and his concept of
harmolodic music.
Coleman's "
Broadway Blues" and "
Lonely Woman" became genre standards and are cited as important early works in free jazz.
His album ''
Sound Grammar'' received the 2007
Pulitzer Prize for Music
The Pulitzer Prize for Music is one of seven Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually in Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first given in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year, and this was eventually converted ...
.
Biography
Early life
Coleman was born on March 9, 1930, in
Fort Worth, Texas
Fort Worth is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Texas and the 13th-largest city in the United States. It is the county seat of Tarrant County, covering nearly into four other counties: Denton, Johnson, Parker, and Wise. Accord ...
,
where he was raised.
He attended
I.M. Terrell High School
I.M Terrell High School was a secondary school located in Fort Worth, Texas. The school opened in 1882 as the city's first black school, during the era of formal racial segregation in the United States. Though the high school closed in 1973, th ...
, where he participated in band until he was dismissed for improvising during "
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
" march. He began performing
R&B and
bebop
Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early-to-mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, instrumen ...
on tenor saxophone and started The Jam Jivers with
Prince Lasha and
Charles Moffett
Charles Moffett (September 6, 1929 – February 14, 1997) was an American free jazz drummer.
Biography
Moffett was born in Fort Worth, Texas, where he attended I.M. Terrell High School with Ornette Coleman. Before switching to drums, Mof ...
.
Eager to leave town, he accepted a job in 1949 with a
Silas Green from New Orleans traveling show and then with touring rhythm and blues shows. After a show in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he was assaulted and his saxophone was destroyed.
He switched to alto saxophone, which remained his primary instrument, first playing it in New Orleans after the Baton Rouge incident. He then joined the band of
Pee Wee Crayton
Connie Curtis Crayton (December 18, 1914 – June 25, 1985), known as Pee Wee Crayton, was an American R&B and blues guitarist and singer.
Career
Crayton was born in Rockdale, Texas. He began playing guitar seriously after moving to California ...
and traveled with them to Los Angeles. He worked at various jobs, including as an elevator operator, while pursuing his music career.
In California he found like-minded musicians such as
Ed Blackwell
Edward Joseph Blackwell (October 10, 1929 – October 7, 1992) was an American jazz drummer born in New Orleans, Louisiana, known for his extensive, influential work with Ornette Coleman.
Biography
Blackwell's early career began in New Orleans ...
,
Bobby Bradford,
Don Cherry
Donald Stewart Cherry (born February 5, 1934) is a Canadian former ice hockey player, coach, and television commentator. Cherry played one game in the National Hockey League (NHL) with the Boston Bruins, and later coached the team for five se ...
,
Charlie Haden
Charles Edward Haden (August 6, 1937 – July 11, 2014) was an American jazz double bass player, bandleader, composer and educator whose career spanned more than 50 years. In the late 1950s, he was an original member of the ground-breaking ...
,
Billy Higgins
Billy Higgins (October 11, 1936 – May 3, 2001) was an American jazz drummer. He played mainly free jazz and hard bop.
Biography
Higgins was born in Los Angeles, California, United States. Higgins played on Ornette Coleman's first records, ...
, and
Charles Moffett
Charles Moffett (September 6, 1929 – February 14, 1997) was an American free jazz drummer.
Biography
Moffett was born in Fort Worth, Texas, where he attended I.M. Terrell High School with Ornette Coleman. Before switching to drums, Mof ...
.
He recorded his debut album, ''
Something Else!!!!
''Something Else!!!!'' (subtitled ''The Music of Ornette Coleman'') is the debut album by jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman. It was released by Contemporary Records in September 1958. According to AllMusic, the album "shook up the jazz world", rev ...
'' (1958), with Cherry, Higgins,
Walter Norris, and
Don Payne.
During the same year he belonged briefly to a quintet led by
Paul Bley
Paul Bley, CM (November 10, 1932 – January 3, 2016) was a jazz pianist known for his contributions to the free jazz movement of the 1960s as well as his innovations and influence on trio playing and his early live performance on the Moog and ...
that performed at a club in New York City.
By the time ''
Tomorrow Is the Question!'' was recorded soon after with Cherry, Higgins, and Haden, the jazz world had been shaken up by Coleman's alien music. Some jazz musicians called him a fraud, while conductor
Leonard Bernstein praised him.
1959: ''The Shape of Jazz to Come''
In 1959
Atlantic
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...
released ''
The Shape of Jazz to Come
''The Shape of Jazz to Come'' is the third album by jazz musician Ornette Coleman. Released on Atlantic Records in 1959, it was his debut on the label and his first album featuring the working quartet including himself, trumpeter Don Cherry, bass ...
''. 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."
''
Jazzwise
''Jazzwise'', launched in 1997, is the UK jazz monthly magazine. ''Jazzwise'' has a broad sub-genre coverage, from jazz, improv, hard bop, and jazz-rock to bebop and classic jazz, and also covers jazz crossover, including jazz-funk, jazz hip-h ...
'' listed it No. 3 on their list of the 100 best jazz albums of all time.
When French philosopher
Jacques Derrida interviewed him, Ornette said that "Lonely Woman" from the album resulted from seeing a rich woman who was in such solitude.
Derrida Interviews Coleman
accessed October 4, 2014
Coleman's quartet received a long – and sometimes controversial – engagement at
Five Spot
5 is a number, numeral, and glyph.
5, five or number 5 may also refer to:
* AD 5, the fifth year of the AD era
* 5 BC, the fifth year before the AD era
Literature
* ''5'' (visual novel), a 2008 visual novel by Ram
* ''5'' (comics), an awa ...
jazz club in New York City.
Leonard Bernstein,
Lionel Hampton, and the
Modern Jazz Quartet were impressed and offered encouragement. Hampton asked to perform with the quartet; Bernstein helped Haden obtain a composition grant from the
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. But trumpeter
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of musi ...
said Coleman was "all screwed up inside",
although he later became a proponent of Coleman's innovations.
Coleman's early sound was due in part to his use of a
plastic saxophone. He bought a plastic horn in Los Angeles in 1954 because he was unable to afford a metal saxophone, though he didn't like the sound of the plastic instrument at first.
On the Atlantic recordings, Coleman's sidemen in the quartet are Cherry on cornet or
pocket trumpet; Charlie Haden,
Scott LaFaro
Rocco Scott LaFaro (April 3, 1936 – July 6, 1961) was an American jazz double bassist known for his work with the Bill Evans Trio. LaFaro broke new ground on the instrument, developing a countermelodic style of accompaniment rather than playing ...
, and then
Jimmy Garrison on bass; and Higgins or his replacement
Ed Blackwell
Edward Joseph Blackwell (October 10, 1929 – October 7, 1992) was an American jazz drummer born in New Orleans, Louisiana, known for his extensive, influential work with Ornette Coleman.
Biography
Blackwell's early career began in New Orleans ...
on drums. The complete recordings for the label were collected on the box set ''
Beauty Is a Rare Thing''.
1960s: ''Free Jazz'' and Blue Note
In 1960, Coleman recorded ''
Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation'', which featured a double quartet, including Don Cherry and
Freddie Hubbard on trumpet,
Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet, Haden and LaFaro on bass, and both Higgins and Blackwell on drums.
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 to date and was one of Coleman's most controversial albums. The music features a regular but complex pulse, one drummer playing "straight" while the other played double-time; the thematic material is a series of brief, dissonant fanfares. A series of solo features for each member of the band, but the other soloists are free to chime in as they wish. In the January 18, 1962, issue of ''
Down Beat
' (styled in all caps) is an American music magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond", the last word indicating its expansion beyond the jazz realm which it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1934 in Chi ...
'' magazine, in a review titled "Double View of a Double Quartet", Pete Welding gave the album five stars while John A. Tynan rated it zero stars.
Time has been kinder to the album, though, with
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...
listing it as one of "20 Essential Free Jazz albums".
Coleman intended "free jazz" as simply an album title. But his growing reputation placed him at the forefront of jazz innovation, and
free jazz
Free jazz is an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventions, such as regular tempos, tones, and chord changes. Musicians duri ...
was soon considered a new genre, though Coleman has expressed discomfort with the term. Among the reasons he may have disapproved of the term is that his music contains
composition
Composition or Compositions may refer to:
Arts and literature
*Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography
*Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include v ...
. His melodic material, although skeletal, recalls melodies that
Charlie Parker
Charles Parker Jr. (August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955), nicknamed "Bird" or "Yardbird", was an American jazz saxophonist, band leader and composer. Parker was a highly influential soloist and leading figure in the development of bebop, a form ...
wrote over
standard Standard may refer to:
Symbols
* Colours, standards and guidons, kinds of military signs
* Standard (emblem), a type of a large symbol or emblem used for identification
Norms, conventions or requirements
* Standard (metrology), an object th ...
harmonies. The music is closer to the bebop that came before it than is sometimes popularly imagined.
After the Atlantic period and into the early part of the 1960s, Coleman's music became more angular and engaged with the
avant-garde jazz
Avant-garde jazz (also known as avant-jazz and experimental jazz) is a style of music and improvisation that combines avant-garde art music and composition with jazz. It originated in the early 1950s and developed through to the late 1960s. Ori ...
which had developed in part around his innovations.
After his quartet disbanded, he formed a trio with
David Izenzon
David Izenzon (May 17, 1932 – October 8, 1979) was an American jazz double bassist.
Biography
Izenzon was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. He graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology and later received a master's deg ...
on bass and
Charles Moffett
Charles Moffett (September 6, 1929 – February 14, 1997) was an American free jazz drummer.
Biography
Moffett was born in Fort Worth, Texas, where he attended I.M. Terrell High School with Ornette Coleman. Before switching to drums, Mof ...
on drums. He extended the sound of his music, introducing string players and playing trumpet and violin, which he played left-handed. He had little conventional musical technique and used the instruments to make large, unrestrained gestures. His friendship with
Albert Ayler
Albert Ayler (; July 13, 1936 – November 25, 1970) was an American avant-garde jazz saxophonist, singer and composer.
After early experience playing R&B and bebop, Ayler began recording music during the free jazz era of the 1960s. Howev ...
influenced his development on trumpet and violin. Charlie Haden sometimes joined this trio to form a two-bass quartet.
Coleman signed with
Blue Note
In jazz and blues, a blue note is a note that—for expressive purposes—is sung or played at a slightly different pitch from standard. Typically the alteration is between a quartertone and a semitone, but this varies depending on the musical c ...
and recorded ''
At the Golden Circle Stockholm
''At the "Golden Circle" Stockholm'' is an avant-garde jazz live album in two volumes by the Ornette Coleman Trio, documenting concerts on the nights of December 3 and 4, 1965, at the Gyllene Cirkeln jazz club in Stockholm. Both volumes were re ...
''.
In 1966, he recorded ''
The Empty Foxhole'' with his son,
Denardo Coleman, who was ten years old.
Freddie Hubbard and
Shelly Manne
Sheldon "Shelly" Manne (June 11, 1920 – September 26, 1984) was an American jazz drummer. Most frequently associated with West Coast jazz, he was known for his versatility and also played in a number of other styles, including Dixieland, sw ...
regarded this as an ill-advised piece of publicity on Coleman's part.
Despite his youth, Denardo Coleman had studied drumming for several years. His technique was unrefined but enthusiastic, owing more to pulse-oriented free jazz drummers like
Sunny Murray than to bebop drummers.
He became his father's primary drummer in the late 1970s.
Coleman formed another quartet. Haden, Garrison, and
Elvin Jones
Elvin Ray Jones (September 9, 1927 – May 18, 2004) was an American jazz drummer of the post-bop era.
Most famously a member of John Coltrane's quartet, with whom he recorded from late 1960 to late 1965, Jones appeared on such widely celebrate ...
appeared, and
Dewey Redman
Walter Dewey Redman (May 17, 1931 – September 2, 2006) was an American saxophonist who performed free jazz as a bandleader and with Ornette Coleman and Keith Jarrett.
Redman mainly played tenor saxophone, though he occasionally also played al ...
joined the group, usually on tenor saxophone. On February 29, 1968, in a group with Haden,
Ed Blackwell
Edward Joseph Blackwell (October 10, 1929 – October 7, 1992) was an American jazz drummer born in New Orleans, Louisiana, known for his extensive, influential work with Ornette Coleman.
Biography
Blackwell's early career began in New Orleans ...
, and
David Izenzon
David Izenzon (May 17, 1932 – October 8, 1979) was an American jazz double bassist.
Biography
Izenzon was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. He graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology and later received a master's deg ...
Coleman performed live with
Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono ( ; ja, 小野 洋子, Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking.
Ono grew up i ...
at
Albert Hall
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London. One of the UK's most treasured and distinctive buildings, it is held in trust for the nation and managed by a registered charity which receives no governm ...
. One song was included on the album ''
Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band
''Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band'' is the debut studio album by Japanese artist and musician Yoko Ono, released on Apple Records in December 1970. It was released simultaneously with her husband's album ''John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band''. Backed by the P ...
'' (1970).
He continued to explore his interest in string textures – from ''
Town Hall, 1962'', culminating with the ''
Skies of America
''Skies of America'' is the 17th album by jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman, released on Columbia Records in 1972. It consists of one long composition by Coleman taking up both sides of the album, played by the London Symphony Orchestra and conduct ...
'' album in 1972. (Sometimes this had a practical value, as it facilitated his group's appearance in the UK in 1965, where jazz musicians were under a quota arrangement but classical performers were exempt.)
1970s–1990s: Harmolodic funk and Prime Time
![Ornette Coleman 1978](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Ornette_Coleman_1978.jpg)
Coleman, like Miles Davis before him, took to playing with
electrified instruments. The 1976 funk album ''
Dancing in Your Head
''Dancing in Your Head'' is a studio album by jazz artist Ornette Coleman, released in 1977 by Horizon Records.
Recording
"Theme from a Symphony" was the first recording to feature Coleman's electric band, which later became known as Prime ...
'', Coleman's first recording with the group which later became known as
Prime Time, prominently featured electric guitars. While this marked a stylistic departure for Coleman, the music maintained certain similarities to his earlier work. These performances had the same angular melodies and simultaneous group improvisations – what
Joe Zawinul referred to as "nobody solos, everybody solos" and what Coleman called ''
harmolodics Harmolodics is a musical philosophy and method of musical composition and improvisation developed by American jazz saxophonist-composer Ornette Coleman. His work following this philosophy during the late 1970s and 1980s inspired a style of forwa ...
'' – and although the nature of the pulse was altered, Coleman's rhythmic approach was not.
![Ornette Coleman trumpet](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Ornette_Coleman_trumpet.jpg)
In the 1980s, albums such as ''
Virgin Beauty'' and ''
Of Human Feelings'' continued to use rock and
funk rhythms, sometimes called
free funk
Free-funk is a combination of avant-garde jazz with funk music that developed in the 1970s. Leaders of the genre include Ornette Coleman and his Prime Time group, Ronald Shannon Jackson and his group Decoding Society, Jamaaladeen Tacuma and his g ...
.
Jerry Garcia played guitar on three tracks from Coleman's 1988 album ''Virgin Beauty'': "Three Wishes", "Singing in the Shower", and "Desert Players". Coleman joined the
Grateful Dead on stage in 1993 during "Space" and stayed for "The Other One", "Stella Blue",
Bobby Bland
Robert Calvin Bland (born Robert Calvin Brooks; January 27, 1930 – June 23, 2013), known professionally as Bobby "Blue" Bland, was an American blues singer.
Bland developed a sound that mixed gospel with the blues and R&B. He was descr ...
's "Turn on Your Lovelight", and the encore "Brokedown Palace".
Another collaboration was with guitarist
Pat Metheny
Patrick Bruce Metheny ( ; born August 12, 1954) is an American jazz guitarist and composer.
He is the leader of the Pat Metheny Group and is also involved in duets, solo works, and other side projects. His style incorporates elements of progre ...
, with whom Coleman recorded ''
Song X'' (1985); though the album was released under Metheny's name, Coleman was essentially co-leader (contributing all the compositions).
![Ornette Coleman](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Ornette_Coleman.jpg)
In 1990, the city of
Reggio Emilia in Italy held a three-day "Portrait of the Artist" featuring a Coleman quartet with Cherry, Haden, and Higgins. The festival also presented performances of his chamber music and the symphonic ''Skies of America''. In 1991, Coleman played on the soundtrack for
David Cronenberg's film ''
Naked Lunch
''Naked Lunch'' (sometimes ''The Naked Lunch'') is a 1959 novel by American writer William S. Burroughs. The book is structured as a series of loosely connected vignettes, intended by Burroughs to be read in any order. The reader follows the na ...
''; the orchestra was conducted by
Howard Shore. It is notable among other things for including a rare sighting of Coleman playing a jazz standard:
Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Sphere Monk (, October 10, 1917 – February 17, 1982) was an American jazz pianist and composer. He had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including " 'Round Midnight", ...
's "
Misterioso". Two 1972 (pre-electric) Coleman recordings, "Happy House" and "Foreigner in a Free Land", were used in
Gus Van Sant's 2000 ''
Finding Forrester
''Finding Forrester'' is a 2000 American drama film written by Mike Rich and directed by Gus Van Sant. In the film, a black teenager, Jamal Wallace (Rob Brown (actor), Rob Brown), is invited to attend a prestigious private high school. By chance ...
''. Coleman released four records in 1995 and 1996, and for the first time in many years worked regularly with piano players (either
Geri Allen
Geri Antoinette Allen (June 12, 1957 – June 27, 2017) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and educator. In addition to her career as a performer and bandleader, Allen was also an associate professor of music at the University of Pittsburgh ...
or
Joachim Kühn
Joachim Kurt Kühn (born 15 March 1944) is a German jazz pianist.
Biography
He was born in Leipzig, Germany. Kühn was a musical prodigy and made his debut as a concert pianist, having studied classical piano and composition, with Arthur Schmid ...
).
2000s
In September 2006 he released a live album titled ''
Sound Grammar'' with his son, Denardo Coleman, and two bassists,
Greg Cohen
Greg Cohen (born July 13, 1953) is an American jazz bassist who has been a member of John Zorn's Masada quartet and worked with numerous other noted musicians for over four decades.
Career
Cohen plays traditional jazz and other styles, includin ...
, and Tony Falanga. This was his first album of new material in ten years and was recorded in Germany in 2005. It won the 2007
Pulitzer Prize for music, Coleman being only the second jazz musician to win the prize.
Jazz pianist
Joanne Brackeen
Joanne Brackeen (born Joanne Grogan; July 26, 1938) is an American jazz pianist and music educator.
Music career
Brackeen was born in Ventura, California, United States, and attended the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. She was a fan of pop pi ...
stated in an interview with
Marian McPartland
Margaret Marian McPartland OBE ( Turner;Hasson, Claire"Marian McPartland: Jazz Pianist: An Overview of a Career" PhD Thesis. Retrieved 12 August 2008. 20 March 1918 – 20 August 2013), was an English–American jazz pianist, composer, and wri ...
that Coleman mentored her and gave her music lessons.
Coleman married poet
Jayne Cortez
Jayne Cortez (May 10, 1934 – December 28, 2012) was an African-American poet, activist, small press publisher and spoken-word performance artist whose voice is celebrated for its political, surrealistic and dynamic innovations in lyricism and ...
in 1954. The couple divorced in 1964. They had one son,
Denardo, born in 1956.
Coleman died of a cardiac arrest at the age of 85 in New York City on June 11, 2015.
His funeral was a three-hour event with performances and speeches by several of his collaborators and contemporaries.
Awards and honors
* ''
Down Beat
' (styled in all caps) is an American music magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond", the last word indicating its expansion beyond the jazz realm which it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1934 in Chi ...
'' Jazz Hall of Fame, 1969
*
MacArthur Fellowship
The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...
, 1994
*
Praemium Imperiale
Prince Takamatsu
The Praemium Imperiale ( ja, 高松宮殿下記念世界文化賞, Takamatsu-no-miya Denka Kinen Sekai Bunka-shō, World Culture Prize in Memory of His Imperial Highness Prince Takamatsu) is an international art prize inaugur ...
, 2001
*
Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize
The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize or Gish Prize is given annually to "a man or woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind's enjoyment and understanding of life." It is among the most prestigious and on ...
, 2004
* Honorary doctorate of music,
Berklee College of Music, 2006
* Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, 2007
*
Pulitzer Prize for music, 2007
* Miles Davis Award,
Festival International de Jazz de Montréal
The Festival International de Jazz de Montréal ( en, Montreal International Jazz Festival) is an annual jazz festival held in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The Montreal Jazz Fest holds the 2004 Guinness World Record as the world's largest jazz fes ...
, 2009
* Honorary doctorate by the
Graduate Center, CUNY
The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY Graduate Center) is a public research institution and post-graduate university in New York City. Serving as the principal doctorate-granting institution of the ...
, 2008
* Honorary doctorate of music, University of Michigan, 2010
Discography
In popular culture
McClintic Sphere, a fictional character in
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. ( , ; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including history, music, scie ...
's
debut novel
A debut novel is the first novel a novelist publishes. Debut novels are often the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to p ...
''
V.'' (1963), is an innovative saxophonist modeled on Ornette Coleman.
Notes
References
* Interview with
Roy Eldridge
David Roy Eldridge (January 30, 1911 – February 26, 1989), nicknamed "Little Jazz", was an American jazz trumpeter. His sophisticated use of harmony, including the use of tritone substitutions, his virtuosic solos exhibiting a departure from ...
, ''
Esquire'' March 1961
* Interview with
Andy Hamilton
Andrew Neil Hamilton (born 28 May 1954) is a British comedian, game show panellist, television director, comedy screenwriter, radio dramatist, novelist and actor.
Early life and education
Hamilton was born in Fulham, southwest London. He ...
. "A Question of Scale" ''
The Wire
''The Wire'' is an American crime drama television series created and primarily written by author and former police reporter David Simon. The series was broadcast by the cable network HBO in the United States. ''The Wire'' premiered on June 2 ...
'' July 2005
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External links
"Forms and Sounds"by Ethan Iverson about early Coleman and Harmolodics
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ttps://web.archive.org/web/20080907023534/http://www.laweekly.com/music/music/ornette-coleman-interview-1996/1191/ "Ornette Coleman interview, 1996", ''LA Weekly''''New York Observer'' December 19, 2005
{{DEFAULTSORT:Coleman, Ornette
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