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***During the early 1950s while in Los Angeles, Texas-born Ornette Coleman's musical ideas were so controversial, he rarely found public performance possibilities. Known for playing out of tune with a wild passion on a white plastic sax, Coleman was a pariah for years; even following his return to alto, players would leave the bandstand when he tried to sit in. A tardy Dexter Gordon arrived to find Coleman playing with Gordon's rhythm section and demanded Coleman stop playing "immediately. Right now. Take that tune out and get it off the bandstand." Another famous incident involved getting punched by Max Roach. Coleman did, however, find a core of musicians - namely Don Cherry, Ed Blackwell and Charlie Haden - who took his musical concepts seriously enough to midwife the birth of The Ornette Coleman Quartet. With the release of his 1959 debut album, Something Else!, Coleman had ushered in a new era in jazz history. This music was free from the prevailing conventions of harmony, rhythm and melody, and transformed the art form with a concept he called Harmolodic. "When our group plays," Coleman once stated, "before we set up to play, we do not have any idea what the end result will be. Each player is free to contribute what he feels in the music at any given moment." Soon he was signed to Atlantic Records, where he recorded some of his most brilliant work, characterized by an "immensely vocal" sound, "with virtually no vibrato: it is gutsy without being raspy, because there is a sweetness to it. He also had what in conventional mainstream jazz would be called the 'Texas cry,' only he pushed it further, distorted it more often." Originally released in 1961, This Is Our Music marked Coleman's third release for the label and certainly one of his finest. Sepia-Tone has newly re-mastered this important release, presenting it with the best sound quality it's ever had. The Ornette Coleman Quartet made music that was simultaneously radical and beautiful-- This Is Our Music is incontrovertible evidence. |
