Ornette Coleman Biography Quotes 32 Report mistakes

Early Life and Musical Beginnings
Ornette Coleman was born on March 9, 1930, in Fort Worth, Texas, and grew up in a cultural milieu where marching bands, blues, and gospel saturated daily life. He took up the alto saxophone as a teenager and began working in rhythm-and-blues bands across Texas and the Southwest, where he learned to play for dancers and to project a distinctive, vocalized tone. In Fort Worth he crossed paths with peers who would later matter in jazz, including King Curtis and Dewey Redman. From the beginning he pursued a personal approach to improvisation that resisted the hard boundaries of chord progressions. By the early 1950s he had moved to Los Angeles, where he struggled for acceptance yet found kindred spirits such as trumpeter Don Cherry and drummer Billy Higgins. They rehearsed intensely and began to articulate the ideas that would later be called harmolodics: improvisation rooted in melody and collective intuition rather than fixed harmonic hierarchies.

First Recordings and the New York Breakthrough
Lester Koenig at Contemporary Records took an early chance on Coleman, releasing Something Else!!!! in 1958, followed by Tomorrow Is the Question! in 1959. The former still used a pianist, while the latter eliminated piano to free the ensemble's movement. Nesuhi Ertegun at Atlantic Records then welcomed him to New York, where the albums The Shape of Jazz to Come and Change of the Century signaled a startling break with bebop orthodoxy. The quartet of Coleman, Don Cherry, bassist Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins (soon joined or replaced at times by drummer Ed Blackwell) forged a sound built on melodic invention, elastic rhythm, and deep blues feeling. Their 1959 residency at the Five Spot Cafe became a flashpoint. Admirers such as John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Leonard Bernstein, Gunther Schuller, and John Lewis heard a path forward; skeptics including Miles Davis voiced doubts. The debates only amplified the impact of pieces like Lonely Woman, whose keening lyricism became emblematic of his approach.

Free Jazz and the Expansion of the Quartet
Coleman's Atlantic period culminated in Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation in 1960, a side-long performance by a "double quartet" that included Eric Dolphy and Freddie Hubbard alongside members of Coleman's working group. The record proposed ensemble improvisation without a pre-set chord sequence, with form arising from conversational interplay. He continued to refine his ideas on albums such as This Is Our Music, Ornette!, and Ornette on Tenor. A 1962 Town Hall concert introduced his writing for strings and a new trio with bassist David Izenzon and drummer Charles Moffett, signaling his interest in chamber-like textures and long-form composition. During a partial retreat from the spotlight, he taught himself trumpet and violin, treating each instrument as an extension of his singing, speech-like phrasing.

Harmolodics, Blue Note Sessions, and the Return to Groups
In the mid-1960s he recorded for Blue Note, where The Empty Foxhole boldly featured his son, the drummer Denardo Coleman, then a prodigy who would become both musical collaborator and later manager. New York Is Now! and Love Call paired Coleman with Elvin Jones and Jimmy Garrison, linking him to the classic John Coltrane rhythm team even as he pursued his own pathways. Around the turn of the 1970s he reassembled a plugged-in, muscular quartet and welcomed back alumni like Charlie Haden and drummers Ed Blackwell or Billy Higgins, while bringing in Dewey Redman on tenor saxophone. The album Science Fiction drew on this circle and featured vocalist Asha Puthli on select tracks, revealing Coleman's curiosity for timbre and voice. Throughout, his harmolodic concept took clearer shape: each musician, equally empowered, could transpose and transform melodies independently while remaining attuned to group motion.

Orchestral Ambitions and Prime Time
Coleman's orchestral canvas arrived with Skies of America, recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra, a sweeping portrait that fused symphonic writing with his improvisational language. He soon formed Prime Time, a plugged-in band that reimagined harmolodics for an electric era. Guitarists Bern Nix and Charlie Ellerbee, bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma, and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson became pivotal voices in the ensemble. Albums like Dancing in Your Head and Body Meta layered interlocking lines, danceable grooves, and abrasive counterpoint, making a case that free improvisation and funk rhythm could coexist without compromise. Prime Time's dense, egalitarian textures embodied Coleman's belief that freedom and responsibility are inseparable in music.

Collaborations, Duos, and Cross-Genre Reach
Coleman remained a voracious collaborator. He partnered with guitarist Pat Metheny on Song X, a charged meeting that also featured Charlie Haden and drummers Jack DeJohnette and Denardo Coleman. He reunited strands of his history on In All Languages, pairing the original quartet's acoustics with Prime Time's electricity. Virgin Beauty brought the band to a wider rock audience, with Jerry Garcia guesting on guitar. In chamber-like settings he recorded intimate duos with pianist Joachim Kuhn, and he continued to refine his language on the Harmolodic/Verve releases Tone Dialing and the twin Sound Museum albums. Across these projects, he honored the blues essence that animated his earliest playing, even as the surface textures changed.

Recognition and Influence
Institutional recognition eventually caught up with the influence musicians had long acknowledged. Coleman was named an NEA Jazz Master, received a MacArthur Fellowship, and later earned the Praemium Imperiale. His live album Sound Grammar won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2007, an affirmation of his artistry late in life, and he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in the same period. His ideas reshaped the vocabularies of John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy, inspired later innovators like Albert Ayler and Anthony Braxton, and informed the compositional thinking of figures beyond jazz. Even those who once doubted him came to recognize the integrity of his sound, its crying, human core, and its insistence on melody as a liberating force.

Personal Circle and Final Years
Coleman's personal life and work were entwined. Poet Jayne Cortez, to whom he was once married, and their son Denardo Coleman remained central figures in his world; Denardo, in particular, sustained his father's ensembles and projects for decades. Producers and advocates such as Nesuhi Ertegun, Lester Koenig, and John Lewis played pivotal roles early on, while peers like Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, Billy Higgins, Ed Blackwell, and Dewey Redman helped shape the signature sound of his groups. Coleman continued to perform internationally into the 2000s, often presenting harmolodic lineups that bridged generations. He died in New York City on June 11, 2015, at the age of 85. The legacy he left is not merely a set of recordings but a proposition: that musicians, listening deeply to one another, can make structure in the moment and find freedom inside form. His sound remains instantly recognizable, tender and fierce at once, and the circle of players around him continues to carry that voice forward.

Our collection contains 32 quotes who is written by Ornette, under the main topics: Art - Music - Learning - Meaning of Life - Deep.

Other people realated to Ornette: Amiri Baraka (Poet), Freddie Hubbard (Musician)