(May 2024) Episode 568 is ORNETTE COLEMAN. A motivation that keeps me going through the time-consuming, often tedious slog of the Opus Project is the joy of discovery. And Ornette Coleman was a supreme joy to discover. Of course, I knew who he was and had heard some of his work. But with my limited knowledge of jazz music and history, and as I am finding that free jazz might be my favorite form of it, here I stumble upon the guy who invented it. Wonderful. Free jazz’s improvisation without harmony, melody, chord changes made Coleman polarizing, but inspired John Coltrane’s “Ascension” (my favorite of his) and the development of avant-garde in music. He wasn’t limited to just the jazz idiom, and composed works performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and others. While saxophone was his main instrument, he also took up trumpet and violin (I love what he does that that).
Favorite album: Science Fiction
Favorite orchestral album: Skies of America
Favorite song: Theme From A Symphony (variation one)
Compared to expectations: ↑
Recommendation: Start with Free Jazz (1960), which launched it all. To me his peak are the five albums between Science Fiction (1971) and Body Meta (1976), including Skies of America (1972) with the LSO
Opus Project 