Ornette Coleman 1930 – 2015: jazz pioneer and visionary dies aged 85

Born on 9 May 1930 in Fort Worth, Texas, he took up alto saxophone age 14 and, initially influenced by Charlie Parker and the blues, played with R&B bands before a hostile reaction to his raw improvised ideas prompted a move to Los Angeles in 1952. Here he worked on his new freer approach to improvisation and, after recording his 1958 debut, Something Else! teamed up with trumpeter Don Cherry, pianist Paul Bley, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Billy Higgins and opened at LA’s Hillcrest Club where he laid the foundations of the sound that was to have a seismic impact on jazz. Initially with Tomorrow Is The Question for Contemporary, then with The Shape of Jazz To Come in 1959, the first in a string of ground- breaking albums for Atlantic, his music, despite divided reactions, ricocheted through the jazz world with a power and influence that’s as strong today as it was back then.

Coleman went on to record highly significant albums for Blue Note and Impulse!, record with Moroccan musicians and develop the rhythmic free-funk he called harmolodics, before collaborations with the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia, Pat Metheny and Yoko Ono. In 2009 he curated the annual Meltdown festival at London’s Southbank, appearing with The Roots, Patti Smith and David Murray, and made his last UK appearance at the London Jazz Festival in November 2011 at the Royal Festival Hall, still hot-wired into the same restless spirit that drove him on in spite of encroaching ill health.

See page the Subscribe to Jazzwise Jazzwise (out on 25 June) for a fuller appreciation of Coleman’s work by Kevin Le Gendre.

– Jon Newey

  – Photo by Tim Dickeson