Ornette Coleman: A Harmolodic LifeOrnette Coleman is one of the great architects of jazz: Like Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker, he changed the way we listen to it. This book, by noted jazz scholar and critic John Litweiler, is the first full-length biography of the jazz legend. Coleman became a professional musician in his teens, touring the South with hardscrabble blues bands and incubating his radical ideas. His New York debut in 1959 at the famous Five Spot is now legendary, earning him such distinguished fans as Leonard Bernstein and such celebrated students as John Coltrane. He kept pushing jazz to its limits over the next three decades: in the 1960s creating symphonic works to be staged in concert halls, according the music a new dignity; and in the 1970s and 1980s performing "fusion" collaborations with rocker Pat Metheny and the master musicians of Joujouka, Morocco. Ornette Coleman makes extensive use of previously unpublished interviews and detailed musical examples that further illuminate the text. |
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