The Music of Ornette Coleman - Essay Example

Number] Ornette Coleman The history of evolution and popularity of Jazz music in America has been complimented by stupendous contributions made by some outstanding musicians and singers that give new dimensions to the musical sphere and dramatically changed the conventional way of composing and listening music. Ornette Coleman, a revolutionary saxophonist, violinist and trumpeter has been listed among the wonderful personalities with exceptional artistic vision who significantly worked for expanding the boundaries of conventional music and played important role in the fruition of contemporary music (Martin and Waters, p261). Coleman was publicly appeared on the New York musical scene in late 1950s and since then he is widely known and approached for his unique experiments and inventiveness with music. Coleman has been widely regarded as the pioneer of free jazz however, his contributions, inventions and efforts are not limited to any particular category but he kept on testing new music styles in different types of music including free funk, jazz rock, free jazz and Avant-grade Jazz (Martin and Waters, p261) His contributions to the free Jazz movement evolved during 1960s have been widely recognized and critics commonly agree that Coleman significantly contributed towards the prosperous diffusion of free jazz during that era. Coleman was born in 1930 in Texas and had great interest in playing musical instruments since his childhood. He was just 14 years old when he started playing his first saxophone. He learnt playing the instrument with his own efforts and started performing with different rhythm and blues bans. He was nineteen years old when he left his hometown and became part of Silas Green’s travelling minstrel show. Later he joined Pee Wee Crauton’s band and people started giving attention to his performance. His honkey-tonks and blues bar style became controversial. During 1950s he started playing with Bebop ruled jazz at jam sessions. Coleman continued with his efforts to bring something new to the music. He explored for different musical possibilities through which he could expand the fusing elements of bebop and other music styles. Coleman was not in favour of conventional rules of harmony, rhythm and melody and thus he created his personal musical vocabulary in which he didn’t cared for several traditional melodic and rhythmic structures. His mutinous style of playing music was not liked by many musicians and many of them used to walk off the state during his performance on the stage (Martin and Waters, p261). Along with time, his contributions and innovative style was widely appraised and critics accepted that his innovations “harmolodics” have played an important role on the revitalization of Jazz in America as he provided some new dimensions to the Jazz music and broke the conventional boundaries of bebop and other musical forms. In Los Angeles he became successful to find some likeminded musicians with whom he spent lot of time in refining his music ideas and rehearsing his musical concepts. His musical group was consisted of some talented musicians of his age including Don Cherry and Bobby Bradford as trumpeters, Ed Blackwell and Billy Higgins as trumpeters and Charlie Haden as bassist. Though the group didn’t performed much on the stage but their collaboration helped them working on the development of innovative ideas and styles for the musical world. He released his debut Album in 1958 and it was a turning point of his musical career. His first musical album Something Else was followed by Tomorrow is the Question released in 1959. These albums worked for recognizing the identities of Coleman and his band members and people widely started knowing them as members of a band. In November 1959, the band performed in Greenwich Village New York for the first time in which all the band members exposed their unique and unconventional music styles. This performance was regarded as a legendary debut of the group and their unique performance was termed as free jazz. This new musical style upset many musicians and divided the jazz music community in different parts. Some people liked this new innovation with jazz whereas some didn’t like this invention and some irritated musicians also physically abused him. These musicians openly expressed their hostile views for Coleman however; there were some people who liked his unique style and supported the new addition to the music genre of jazz and welcome the new dimensions he added to jazz music. He released two more music albums by 1960 titled Free Jazz and The Shape of Jazz to come however, his contract with Atlantic Records was terminated and he disappeared from the scene for some years. He kept on learning trumpet and violin and continues his experiments with different types of music compositions. During this time he wrote several symphonic works and remained busy in preparing background for the performance of his band. His string quartet first time publicly performed in New York in 1962. His performances during this time were not properly recorded and much of the material that he produced was not publicly performed and recorded. He nurtures his musical experiments and artistic vision during 1970s and formed his band in 1975 with the name Prime Time. His efforts and contributions eventually built his identity and status as free jazz and classical music composer. He created several danceable music pieces by combining different from different music types like jazz, funk jazz, rhythm and blues and rock. His also introduced some unusual combinations of instruments in his band in which he included couples of guitarists, drummers and bassists and set himself on saxophone, violin and trumpet. This combination worked to develop some very popular multi layered melodies and polyrhythmic textures. His musical contributions defined the shape of music during that era and different music styles of 70s including jazz and rock were strongly affected from his efforts. He expanded his musical performances all over the world and travelled throughout North America, Europe and Asia. He contracted with different recording companies and released several albums. He was also highly inspired by the African culture and traditional style music. He travelled across Africa in 1977 and released a music album highly inspired from African musical traditions in 1977 titled Dancing in your Head. In this album Coleman included the tribal musicians of Joujouka and other Africa sites. Coleman always surprised the music world by introducing diverse projects with unique combinations and innovative styles. In 1983, he was commissioned to improve and complete Skies of America and later he was also commissioned for writing chamber piece for Brooklyn Academy’s series Meet the modern. He worked for the project and came up with the finished piece The sacred mind of Johnny Dolphin. It was performed at the Brooklyn Philharmonic giving the opportunity to Coleman for debut performance in England. In 1985, the collection of his work was presented at Hartford by Real Art Ways as a long week festival. In the festival Prime Time gives some performances and several selected works of Coleman were also presented. The Hartford festival met exceptional success after which Coleman was commissioned for several other projects. In 1986 he created Trinity, Notes Talking, In honour of NASA, Planetary Soloist and DNA meets E=MC2. These projects further strengthened his position in the music world. In 1986 and 1987, he released two record hits Song X and In All Languages that brought him again to the public attention. After going through different phases he has now become a mature name of the musical industry having the power of influencing the thought and choices of the audiences by presenting them experimental and innovative music scores. His music album Sound Grammar received Pulitzer Prize in 2007. Over thirty years long career struggle and achievements of Coleman affirm that he possessed the unusual ability and determination to revitalize the musical establishments. He could truly be thought as a revolutionary figure within the history of American music that has played an important role in shaping the features of contemporary American music. The history of American music could never overshadow the name of Coleman because he has made major contributions to variety of music fields ranging from free jazz to funk and rock (Martin and Waters, p261). The culturally diverse audience of today is marked with rapidly changing preferences and choice and in this challenging environment the musicians and composers like Coleman stand as example of meeting the changing expectations of the audiences because he has the capability to come up with different, unique and innovative thing every time. The music pieces created by Coleman depict the richness and vast capabilities of expression in music. Coleman truly knows how to bring new things out of the contemporary musical instruments through implementing new ideas and styles. The musical career of Coleman is spread over several decades and each decade is marked with different type of contributed that he made to several musical genres. He stands as real life example and great source of admiration for the musicians and composers of the present time who could learn a lot form his career. His continuous efforts to create unique, unconventional and innovative musical pieces make him unique among the musicians of all the ages. Work Cited Henry Martin, Keith Waters. Jazz: The First 100 Years. London: Cengage Learning, 2011 \ Read More