1959

Nowadays Ornette Coleman is known for his all-embracing perspective and unusual wisdom- regarded as one of the most highly influential innovators and involuntary revolutionaries in the history of jazz music-, but once upon a time people did doubt his brilliance.

“The Shape of Jazz to Come,” penned by Coleman and released by Atlantic records in 1959, was considered to be the first avant-garde jazz album in the music’s history. While it may not be completely accurate to say that Coleman’s music was the first shot taken in the revolution of jazz music- Lennie Tristano’s 1949 quartet recordings and sections of Charles Mingus’ earlier recordings arguably paved the way for Ornette in a valuable sense- it certainly was the first time that people had sat up and taken notice. The music dispensed with any kind of musical or tonal formality and opened up a musical world outside of the generally accepted rules of play.

While championed in contemporary culture as a milestone in the rise of avant-garde jazz, the album was met with confusion and unease by a community of jazz artists who hadn’t seen anything so off the wall since the creation of bebop. No one- including Miles Davis himself who infamously described Coleman as “screwed up inside”- was sure how to respond to the new, more liberated, ways of jiving. Coleman reflects on his exile in conversation with Joachim Ernst Berendt, saying “most musicians didn’t take to me; they said I didn’t know the changes and was out of tune.” In reference to Pee Wee Crayton, one of his first leaders, he laments, “it got so he was paying me not to play.”

The release of the record was equally perturbing to an audience who had become extremely comfortable with the established composition of the jazz quartet, because of its unorthadox methods of performance (trumpets could be played without mouthpieces, instruments could be used in new and inventive ways), and can, till this day, sound somewhat sporadic to the untrained ear. Some even complained that they couldn’t differentiate between the music of Ornette Coleman and the noise on a busy street. When one listens to a tune like “Lonely Woman” or “Focus on Sanity,” it is as though the body responds instinctively; this is music that appeals to the soul and speaks to us on a visceral level. Jazz had finally rediscovered its 20’s appeal. The listening becoming infused with an element of religious devotion- you must follow it wherever it leads you.

In life, Coleman is humble and self-deprecating to the point of disillusion. As the man who coined the term “free jazz”- which incidentally does not mean free of charge (perhaps someone should have told the massive crowd who turned up to one of his concerts in 1969 with empty pockets) – Coleman says he cannot say what it means to be free. “I have not talked to any dead people,” he muses, “so I cannot say what it means to be free. I do not know. I never considered myself a rebel, just a citizen. I hate violence and I never wanted to hurt anyone. I never realized how much music meant to so many people until it was too late.” “I don’t believe that I think differently to other people,”he tells me. “When it rains, everyone knows that it’s raining. It’s all part of being human and on this earth.”

In terms of what he still wants to achieve, Coleman says there’s plenty. In particular, he tells me that he wants to continue to compose, and can communicate his ideas and express his emotions more effectively through that medium. Harmolodics, his own musical philosophy, allows him to unite the sound, the word and the concept in his compositions: open expression without the limitations of harmonic rules. “Composing,” he explains (half-jokingly), “is a democratic way to express your opinion without getting in any trouble.”

Coleman may be playing safe in terms of “getting in trouble,” but his disregard for certain elements of traditional structure- meter, rhythm, symmetry and generally established traditional modes of performance- continues triumphantly to this day and is described by Nate Chinen for the New York Times in reference to the performer’s recent Lincoln Centre debut. “There was no organized script, no resident orchestra, no Wynton Marsalis. The idea, instead, was that Mr. Coleman — the famously inscrutable alto saxophonist, composer and free-jazz pioneer—would” as-per-usual “make his…debut on his own bold terms.”