The album that defined an entire stylistic subgenre & for that matter the whole genre itself.
The album which drew a line in the sand when it was first released, & still creates a lot of controversy between musicians, fanbases and critics to this day.
The album in question: Ornette Coleman's 1960 effort, the classic Free Jazz.
The album titles for Ornette were self-explanatory: The Shape of Jazz To Come, Change of the Century & This Is Our Music - all awesome releases in their own right. But Free Jazz, the predecessor of John Coltrane's Ascension, needed no explanation whatsoever: atonal, non-chordal music which is still raw, cutting & sharp as can be almost five decades later. Oh, & it's not without its share of controversy, its share of awe & amazement.
With Free Jazz Ornette only added more fuel to his critics' fire, knowing full well he was an infamous figure blazing new trails in the world of jazz. "What that man doing?" "Play that music right, for crying out loud!!" With two quartets playing the same music at variance with one another, it was so easy to see why his critics only wanted to add more insult to injury when it came to comprehending the man's intents with his music (& why he got panned so ruthlessly).
Yet this is the music what Messr. Coleman wanted to perform & this masterpiece is the final result.
He already took lambastings by folks who thought his full-ensemble way of approaching melody was unconventional, uncharacteristic, untraditional. Fair enough. But Coleman didn't want to be holed up in a box full of conventions & norms (i.e. normal chords & chordal voicings) in the first place; hence the pianoless quartet which made the aforementioned albums, Free Jazz included, such challenging music to get into yet such breaths of fresh air worth taking in.
(Without a piano - the trumpeter Don Cherry filling in that void; for Free Jazz, Freddie Hubbard was added into the musical equation - the music was liberating in more ways than one: no fixed rhythms, no tonal centers to cramp the perfomers' style. In short, it was just free, abstract playing.)
Free Jazz was the apotheosis of a whole subgenre in jazz, bar none. Without it, Ascension would never have gotten off the ground, or for that matter, any of Coltrane's late-period work. Without it, we wouldn't have had Eric Dolphy, Albert Ayler or Pharoah Sanders. Without Free Jazz, a whole genre wouldn't have gone in new directions, continued to push its limits & boundaries, continued to challenge & motivate.
With this album we're hearing the sound of the blues, raw emotion laid bare on tape, a cry unlike any other we heard before in our lives. It's all about emotion, not a bunch of musicians getting all intellectual & mathematical with their instruments. We hear lots of melodies, though not the ones we might expect to hear. Free Jazz is a jamming fest in the spirit of Mardi Gras, Dixieland gone atonal, an improvisational work of art which has stood the test of time, an enduring recording which doesn't deserve any unjust criticisms whatsoever.
Free Jazz is definitely not like any jazz recording you've heard in your life. This is out & out challenging music which is going to require far more than one listen alone to wholeheartedly appreciate.
The album which drew a line in the sand when it was first released, & still creates a lot of controversy between musicians, fanbases and critics to this day.
The album in question: Ornette Coleman's 1960 effort, the classic Free Jazz.
The album titles for Ornette were self-explanatory: The Shape of Jazz To Come, Change of the Century & This Is Our Music - all awesome releases in their own right. But Free Jazz, the predecessor of John Coltrane's Ascension, needed no explanation whatsoever: atonal, non-chordal music which is still raw, cutting & sharp as can be almost five decades later. Oh, & it's not without its share of controversy, its share of awe & amazement.
With Free Jazz Ornette only added more fuel to his critics' fire, knowing full well he was an infamous figure blazing new trails in the world of jazz. "What that man doing?" "Play that music right, for crying out loud!!" With two quartets playing the same music at variance with one another, it was so easy to see why his critics only wanted to add more insult to injury when it came to comprehending the man's intents with his music (& why he got panned so ruthlessly).
Yet this is the music what Messr. Coleman wanted to perform & this masterpiece is the final result.
He already took lambastings by folks who thought his full-ensemble way of approaching melody was unconventional, uncharacteristic, untraditional. Fair enough. But Coleman didn't want to be holed up in a box full of conventions & norms (i.e. normal chords & chordal voicings) in the first place; hence the pianoless quartet which made the aforementioned albums, Free Jazz included, such challenging music to get into yet such breaths of fresh air worth taking in.
(Without a piano - the trumpeter Don Cherry filling in that void; for Free Jazz, Freddie Hubbard was added into the musical equation - the music was liberating in more ways than one: no fixed rhythms, no tonal centers to cramp the perfomers' style. In short, it was just free, abstract playing.)
Free Jazz was the apotheosis of a whole subgenre in jazz, bar none. Without it, Ascension would never have gotten off the ground, or for that matter, any of Coltrane's late-period work. Without it, we wouldn't have had Eric Dolphy, Albert Ayler or Pharoah Sanders. Without Free Jazz, a whole genre wouldn't have gone in new directions, continued to push its limits & boundaries, continued to challenge & motivate.
With this album we're hearing the sound of the blues, raw emotion laid bare on tape, a cry unlike any other we heard before in our lives. It's all about emotion, not a bunch of musicians getting all intellectual & mathematical with their instruments. We hear lots of melodies, though not the ones we might expect to hear. Free Jazz is a jamming fest in the spirit of Mardi Gras, Dixieland gone atonal, an improvisational work of art which has stood the test of time, an enduring recording which doesn't deserve any unjust criticisms whatsoever.
Free Jazz is definitely not like any jazz recording you've heard in your life. This is out & out challenging music which is going to require far more than one listen alone to wholeheartedly appreciate.
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