The musician born in Texas in 1930 and early ’60s gave rise to free, tightening the limit the possibilities of improvisation in jazz as a music genre, has died in Manhattan because of a cardiac arrest.
Musician of great daring and remarkable training, Ornette Coleman, who also played trumpet and violin, had contact with a saxophone for the first time at age 14 and made his first work as a musician in rhythm and blues bands from Texas, of which was expelled several times , and definitively away when he discovered bebop and Charlie Parker, who became his musical spirit guide.
Far from Texas, Coleman part with 23 years to Los Angeles, where in addition to focus on studying musical techniques and theoretical issues, works as a technician lifts and begins to gather the musicians he would develop his style.
In this city is its most famous quartet, comprising Don Cherry on trumpet, Charlie Haden on bass and Billy Higgins or Ed Blackwell on drums, with whom he recorded The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959) first album for Atlantic and the third as a bandleader after Something Else (1958) and Tomorrow is the Question (1959) for the Contemporary label.
From November 1959 Coleman is installed in the redoubt Five Spot in New York, where his concerts revolutionize the scene and starts assert itself as one of the newest and brightest and innovative voices of jazz, who comes to rescue the genre then lethargy that had fallen since the end of bebop.
The Five Spot is a musical stronghold but Coleman’s style, that rescues hard black root that comes from the blues and identity of African Americans also becomes a position within the social movements fighting against apartheid and the black power.
“Free Jazz (A Colecctive Improvisation)” , sixth disc of Coleman and fourth for the 1961 Atlantic seal and recorded with a double quartet, is the study material that ends up laying the groundwork the new genre, which in power and boldness continues to bebop, and proposes a collective creation without specific patterns.
The band recorded “Free Jazz” in a meeting held on December 21, 1960 consisted by Ornette Coleman (alto saxophone), Don Cherry (trumpet), Scott Lafaro (bass) and Billyt Higgins (drums) on the left channel and Eric Dolphy (bass clarinet), Freddie Hubbard (trumpet), Charlie Haden (bass) and Ed . Blacwell (drums) in the right channel
Such was the strength and influence of Coleman at the time that in 1961 other monsters of jazz, John Coltrane, said: “12 minutes I was with him on stage was one of the most intense moments of my life. “
Winner of a Pulitzer Prize, the MacArthur Genius besides being part of the Academy of United States Arts and Letters, Coleman also wrote classical music, always under their creative patterns.
In the late 60s he bought an abandoned building factory in New York’s Soho, which began producing concerts and artistic events.
“The contribution of Ornette musically, spiritually and philosophically inspired has for forty years a lot of musicians to them to look within themselves and to find things you never would have found if he had not had previously successfully creating your own personal language, “he said meanwhile Pat Metheny, with whom he recorded in 1986″ Song X “.
Also collaborated with figures of rock like Lou Reed (declared fan of Coleman) in The Raven , work on the poem by Edgar Allan Poe former leader Velvet Underground recorded in 2003 and Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band in 1970.
Coleman was the creator of the concept of “harmolodics” laying on the same plane and time harmony, melody and rhythm, structure and improvisation. On his own style, once he said:
“I do not want the musicians to follow me but when they themselves follow me”
.
In 2009 came the first and only time in Argentina, where in addition to being lost and a whole day wandering around the city and end up eating a stew in a police station with his captors, gave a memorable concert Gran Rex theater with training sax, two double basses and drums, led by his son, Denardo Coleman.
No comments:
Post a Comment