Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman was an American jazz saxophonist, trumpeter, violinist, and composer. He was best known as a principal founder of the free jazz genre, a term derived from his 1960 album Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation. His pioneering works often abandoned the harmony-based composition, tonality, chord changes, and fixed rhythm found in earlier jazz idioms. Instead, Coleman emphasized an experimental approach to improvisation, rooted in ensemble playing and blues phrasing. AllMusic called him "one of the most beloved and polarizing figures in jazz history," noting that while "now celebrated as a fearless innovator and a genius, he was initially regarded by peers and critics as rebellious, disruptive, and even a fraud."
Patrick Bruce Metheny is an American jazz guitarist and composer.
Charles Edward Haden was an American jazz double bass player, bandleader, composer and educator whose career spanned more than 50 years. Building on the work of predecessors such as Jimmy Blanton and Charles Mingus, Haden helped to revolutionize the harmonic concept of bass playing in jazz, evolving a style that sometimes complemented the soloist, and other times moved independently, liberating bassists from a strictly accompanying role, to allow more direct participation in group improvisation.
Robert Thomas Christgau is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and later became an early proponent of musical movements such as hip hop, riot grrrl, and the import of African popular music in the West. Christgau spent 37 years as the chief music critic and senior editor for The Village Voice, during which time he created and oversaw the annual Pazz & Jop critics poll. He has also covered popular music for Esquire, Creem, Newsday, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Billboard, NPR, Blender, and MSN Music, and was a visiting arts teacher at New York University. CNN senior writer Jamie Allen has called Christgau "the E. F. Hutton of the music world – when he talks, people listen."
Pazz & Jop was an annual poll of top musical releases, compiled by American newspaper The Village Voice and created by music critic Robert Christgau. It published lists of the year's top releases for 1971 and, after Christgau's two-year absence from the Voice, each year from 1974 onward. The polls are tabulated from the submitted year-end top 10 lists of hundreds of music critics. It was named in acknowledgement of the defunct magazine Jazz & Pop, and adopted the ratings system used in that publication's annual critics poll.
In All Languages is a 1987 double album by Ornette Coleman. Coleman and the other members of his 1950s quartet, trumpeter Don Cherry, bassist Charlie Haden, and drummer Billy Higgins, performed on one of the two records, while his electrified ensemble, Prime Time, performed on the other. Many of the songs on In All Languages had two renditions, one by each group.
Dancing in Your Head is a studio album by jazz artist Ornette Coleman, released in 1977 by Horizon Records.
80/81 is a double album by jazz guitarist Pat Metheny recorded over four days in May 1980 and released on ECM later that year. The trio features rhythm section Charlie Haden and Jack DeJohnette with guest saxophonists Dewey Redman and Michael Brecker.
Sound Grammar is a live album by jazz saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman, recorded live in Ludwigshafen, Germany, on 14 October 2005. The album was produced by Coleman and Michaela Deiss, and released on Coleman's new Sound Grammar label. It was his first new album in almost a decade, since the end of his relationship with Verve in the 1990s. It features a mix of new and old originals.
Not in Our Name is a jazz album by bassist Charlie Haden, recorded in 2004 and released by Verve Records in 2005.
Denardo Ornette Coleman is an American jazz drummer. He is the son of Ornette Coleman and Jayne Cortez.
Of Human Feelings is an album by American jazz saxophonist, composer, and bandleader Ornette Coleman. It was recorded on April 25, 1979, at CBS Studios in New York City with his band Prime Time, which featured guitarists Charlie Ellerbee and Bern Nix, bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma, and drummers Calvin Weston and Coleman's son Denardo. It followed the saxophonist's failed attempt to record a direct-to-disc session earlier in March of the same year and was the first jazz album to be recorded digitally in the United States.
Opening the Caravan of Dreams is a 1985 live album by jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman and his Prime Time ensemble. It was recorded at a concert inaugurating the Caravan of Dreams, a then-newly opened performing arts center in Coleman's hometown of Fort Worth, Texas.
The Empty Foxhole is an album by the American jazz saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman that was released on the Blue Note label in 1966. The album features Coleman's untutored violin and trumpet as well as performing on his usual instrument, the alto saxophone, and marks the recording debut of his drummer son Denardo Coleman, who was ten years of age at the time. The album cover features Coleman's own artwork.
Ornette at 12 is an album by the American jazz saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman released on the Impulse! label in 1969.
Crisis is a live album by the American jazz saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman recorded at New York University in 1969 and released on the Impulse! label.
Rejoicing is an album by American jazz guitarist Pat Metheny recorded over two days in November 1983 and released on ECM the following year. The trio features rhythm section Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins, both of whom played with Ornette Coleman in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Tone Dialing is an album recorded in 1995 by the American jazz composer and saxophonist Ornette Coleman and his Prime Time ensemble. It was released in September 1995 by Coleman's Harmolodic record label, in partnership with Verve/PolyGram. It was the Harmolodic label's first release, and "the first disc fully devoted to Coleman's music in eight years."
Friends and Neighbors: Live at Prince Street is a live album by the American jazz saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman recorded in 1970 and released on the Flying Dutchman label.
Live at the Hilcrest Club 1958 is a live album by pianist Paul Bley, saxophonist Ornette Coleman, trumpeter Don Cherry, drummer Billy Higgins and bassist Charlie Haden recorded in California in 1958 and released on the Inner City label in 1976. The album was the first live recording of Ornette Coleman, made shortly after he recorded his first album, Something Else!!!! and featuring the group that would soon record the Atlantic albums The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959) and Change of the Century (1960).
