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Ornette Coleman - The Atlantic Years
Qobuz 24/96





10 albums, very well remastered.
Listening to the first.

Miles Davis had publicly called him a madman. Leonard Bernstein found him, for his part, completely awesome. Few were those that didn’t have a definitive opinion on Ornette Coleman. Some kind of outlaw who preferred playing his own compositions rather than jazz classics, the American saxophonist also developed harmolodics, a theory uniting harmonics and melody. Coleman would remain a trailblazer, a spoilsport who would influence legions of musicians, and would also annoy a good number of them… This box of ten discs compiles one of the most important era in the career of his author. Between 1959 and 1961, he released six studio albums for the Atlantic label. Six albums that are present here and spiced up with alternative takes and various bonuses, all of this of course impeccably remastered by John Webber. Through the opuses The Shape Of Jazz To Come (1959), Change Of The Century (1959), This Is Our Music (1960), Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation (1960), Ornette! (1961) and Ornette On Tenor (1961), and the compilations The Art Of Improvisers (1970), Twins (1971), To Whom Who Keeps A Record (1975) and The Ornette Coleman Legacy (1993), we discover the protean art of a musician that had never stopped reassessing himself. A singular and unique voice assisted by other singular and unique voices like Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, Scott LaFaro, Billy Higgins and Ed Blackwell. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz