Ornette Coleman Trio, live at the Manchester Free Trade Hall on May 14th 1966 Ornette Coleman formed a new trio with bassist David Izenzon and drummer Charles Moffett in October 1961. As the decade progressed, they expanded their musical palette to include trumpet and violin not instruments Coleman was experienced on and divided audiences and critics with their fiercely uncompromising music. Originally broadcast on FM radio during a short British tour, this remarkable set finds them on typically confrontational form, and is presented here together with background notes and images.

Free Jazz was the breakthrough that revealed how Coleman’s compositional impetus could stimulate the improvisational responses of a larger ensemble in interrelated, additionally complex ways. Ornette!, recorded five weeks later, is the only document we have of Scott LaFaro in the quartet. The exclamation point of the title is an indication of the album’s dominant mood. – Art Lange

VMP Classics record of the month for October 2022. (AAA) Lacquers Cut From the Original Mono Tapes by Ryan Smith, Sterling Sound. Pressed on 180g Black Audiophile Vinyl at RTI.

Song X is a collaborative studio album by American jazz guitarist Pat Metheny and saxophonist Ornette Coleman. It is a free jazz record that was produced in a three-day recording session in 1985. The album features mutual Metheny/Coleman collaborator Charlie Haden on bass, Jack DeJohnette on drums, and Coleman's son Denardo on various percussion instruments. It was recorded at The Power Station in New York City between December 12 and December 14, 1985. A remixed and remastered version was issued on CD in August 2005, titled Song X: Twentieth Anniversary. Six unreleased tracks were added prior to the original eight songs. In The Penguin Guide to Jazz (2004), Richard Cook and Brian Morton said the more adventurous recordings on Song X showcased the jubilant playing between Coleman and Metheny, who not only "powered his way through Coleman's itinerary with utter conviction, he set up opportunities for the saxophonist to resolve and created a fusion with which Coleman's often impenetrable Prime Time bands had failed to come to terms." In a review of the album's 2005 reissue, Christgau wrote in Blender that all six bonus tracks were "strong enough to justify kicking off with them, and the perfect warm-up to an album Metheny was right to construct exactly as he did."

Ornette Coleman was an American jazz saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter, and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s, which disregarded harmonic patterns a term he invented with the name of his 1961 album. He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1994. His album Sound Grammar received the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for music. This 2CD set features 26 tracks. This 2 cd set features many of his most popular songs and will make a fine addition to any jazz music fans collection.

The audio companion to David Toop's excellent book advances the case he made, that Les Baxter, Aphex Twin, The Beach Boys, Herbie Hancock, King Tubby and My Bloody Valentine are all related by their effect on sound pioneering. A double-disc set, Ocean of Sound impresses not only with its incredible diversity of musical styles, but with how easily these artists work next to each other. The second disc includes consecutive contributions by Paul Schütze, the Velvet Undergound, Holger Czukay of Can, The Beach Boys, African Headcharge and Sun Ra. Besides illustrating Toop's point beautifully, the album is an excellent addition to the collection of any wide-ranging ambient fan.

The album "Ornette Coleman Quartet - Théâtre Du Palais de Chaillot, October 1971 (Live Restauración 2022)" is a restored recording of the legendary jazz musician Ornette Coleman and his quartet's live performance at the Théâtre du Palais de Chaillot in Paris in October 1971. Ornette Coleman is one of the most innovative and influential figures in jazz, known for pioneering the free jazz movement. This album showcases not only Coleman's extraordinary saxophone playing but also the exceptional performances of his quartet members. The 2022 restoration brings new life to this historic concert, offering enhanced audio quality that allows listeners to fully appreciate the intricacies of the live performance.

Guitarist Pat Metheny had long expressed admiration for Ornette Coleman's music, had recorded his compositions, and had worked extensively with bassist Charlie Haden, so a collaboration was not totally unexpected, though who would have guessed that it would be on the Geffen label? Metheny's almost rock star status has worked against him in other partnerships from time to time (notably, his overbearing playing on his project with Derek Bailey, The Sign of 4), but here he happily sublimates his showier instincts and works as sympathetic co-leader, deferring to Coleman's experience and genius.

Continuing Contemporary Records’ 70th anniversary celebration, Craft Recordings is proud to announce the release of the new box set, Ornette Coleman – Genesis of Genius: The Contemporary Albums : 2-LP, 2-CD and digital formats out March 25. The sets feature two seminal releases, 1958’s Something Else!!!! The Music of Ornette Coleman and 1959’s Tomorrow Is the Question! The New Music of Ornette Coleman. These albums transformed an unknown jazz visionary from the hinterlands into the talk of the New York scene.

Rhino's 2018 box The Atlantic Years offers new vinyl pressings of Ornette Coleman's Atlantic discography. This isn't limited to the nine albums that were recorded between 1959 and 1961 then parceled out on LP between 1959 and 1975 (which is the date when To Whom Who Keeps a Record finally hit the stores, following the comps The Art of Improvisers and Twins to market): the unreleased material gathered on Rhino's definitive 1995 box Beauty Is a Rare Thing is here as a bonus LP dubbed The Ornette Coleman Legacy…

Like many of Ornette Coleman's Atlantic sides, The Art of the Improvisers was recorded in numerous sessions from 1959-1961 and assembled for the purpose of creating a cohesive recorded statement. Its opening track, "The Circle with the Hole in the Middle," from 1959, with the classic quartet of Don Cherry, Ed Blackwell, and Charlie Haden, is one of Coleman's recognizable pieces of music. Essentially, the band is that quartet with two very notable exceptions: The last tracks on each side feature a different bass player. On the end of side one, the great Scott LaFaro weighs in on "The Alchemy of Scott La Faro," and Jimmy Garrison weighs in on "Harlem's Manhattan" to close the album out. These last two sessions were recorded early in 1961, in January and March respectively…

Ornette Coleman's first album in several years and first recording for a major label in quite some time features his 1995 version of Prime Time with two guitars, two bassists, son Denardo Coleman on drums and Badal Roy on tables and percussion. In addition the band includes Dave Bryant, Coleman's first keyboardist in decades (although his part is actually fairly minor). The ensembles are funky and quite dense, Coleman really wails on alto (also playing a bit of violin and trumpet) and, despite the inclusion of one obnoxious rap, this free funk set is well worth picking up by open-minded listeners.

Ahhh, glorious, simply glorious. Coleman's turn of the '70s, pre-Prime Time quartet with Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden, and Ed Blackwell always felt somewhat overshadowed in his discography - it was the Skies of America era, too, and the expanded lineups for the Science Fiction/Broken Shadows sessions - so this more than welcome spotlight on that unit is exactly what a veteran Ornette Coleman hand would hope for. There's nothing remotely bootleg about the sound quality, the jacket photos by Val Wilmer are great, the liner notes informative enough, and the music simply exceptional. Two pieces were staples of his concert repertoire for this 1971 tour, and another pair ("Silhouette" and "Summer-Thang" - ouch) apparently listed as untitled improvisations or compositions in discographies, were as fresh to the players then as it is to the listener now…

At The Golden Circle Stockholm Vol. 1 (1965). Ornette Coleman's 1965 trio with bassist David Izenzon and drummer Charles Moffett is easily the most underrated of all his bands. Coming off the light of the famed quartet in which Don Cherry, Eddie Blackwell, and Charlie Haden shone, anything might have looked a bit dimmer, it's true. But this band certainly had no apologies to make. Coleman was deep into creating a new approach to melody, since Haden and Cherry had honed his harmonic sensibilities. Izenzon proved to be the right bassist for Coleman to realize his ambitions. A stunning arco as well as pizzicato player (check his solo in "Dawn") Izenzon offered Coleman the perfect foil. No matter where Coleman's soloing moved the band, Izenzon was there at exactly the same time with an uncanny sense of counterpoint, and he often changed the harmonic mode by force…

Recorded a little over a month after his groundbreaking work Free Jazz, this album found Coleman perhaps retrenching from that idea conceptually, but nonetheless plumbing his quartet music to ever greater heights of richness and creativity. Ornette! was the first time bassist Scott LaFaro recorded with Coleman, and the difference in approach between LaFaro and Charlie Haden is apparent from the opening notes of "W.R.U." There is a more direct propulsion and limberness to his playing, and he can be heard driving Coleman and Don Cherry actively and more aggressively than Haden's warm, languid phrasing. The cuts, with titles derived from the works of Sigmund Freud, are all gems and serve as wonderful launching pads for the musicians' improvisations…