Change Of The Century was an audacious album title, to say the least. On his second Atlantic release—and second with his most like-minded ensemble (trumpeter Don Cherry, bassist Charlie Haden and ...

Jazz’s version of the famous—or infamous—1913 Armory show that introduced Americans to modern art came on November 17, 1959, when Ornette Coleman began a run of shows at the Five Spot Cafe in New York ...

The first time I saw Ornette Coleman live was in my hometown of Syracuse in the summer of 1986; the next month I moved West to begin my studies at CalArts with Charlie Haden and the other fine faculty ...

Ornette Coleman has long been a puzzle to casual jazz fans, his name as baffling as his music, which seems to go everywhere and nowhere. If jazz is the “sound of surprise,” as Whitney Balliett once ...

Early on in his career, alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman, recorded an album entitled, The Shape of Jazz To Come. It might have seemed like an expression of youthful arrogance - Coleman was 29 at the ...

In 1960, Roy DeCarava set his lens on Ornette Coleman, nothing new for the photographer, who had documented fellow African American artists like Norman Lewis, Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, and ...

On July 17th, 1967, the pioneering jazz saxophonist John Coltrane died of liver cancer. He was 40 years old. Four days later, the composer and saxophonist Ornette Coleman – who coined a movement with ...

Coleman's first LPs from the late 1950s are newly available. They showcase Coleman's sound before he began making the records with his own bands that made him a controversial jazz star. This is FRESH ...

We asked writers, critics and musicians including Kamasi Washington, Nubya Garcia and Shabaka Hutchings to tell us how they connect with Coleman’s fearless artistry. By Marcus J. Moore Over the past ...