The SFJAZZ Collective is an American jazz ensemble comprising nine performer/composers, launched in 2004 by SFJAZZ , a West Coast non-profit jazz institution and the presenter of the annual San Francisco Jazz Festival .
31-696: The SFJAZZ Collective performs a new repertoire each year, one that balances the works of a great modern jazz composer from the post-1960 era and eight new compositions (commissioned by SFJAZZ), one from each band member. To date, the composers of focus have been Ornette Coleman (2004), John Coltrane (2005), Herbie Hancock (2006), Thelonious Monk (2007), Wayne Shorter (2008), McCoy Tyner (2009), Horace Silver (2010), Stevie Wonder (2011), Chick Corea (2012), Joe Henderson (2014), Michael Jackson (2015), Miles Davis (2016), Ornette Coleman , Stevie Wonder , & Thelonious Monk (2017), and Antonio Carlos Jobim (2018). For its tenth anniversary tour in 2013,
62-562: A controversial residency at the Five Spot jazz club in New York City and he released the influential album The Shape of Jazz to Come , his debut LP on Atlantic Records . Coleman's subsequent Atlantic releases in the early 1960s would profoundly influence the direction of jazz in that decade, and his compositions " Lonely Woman " and " Broadway Blues " became genre standards that are cited as important early works in free jazz. In
93-600: A gauntlet that some still haven't come to grips with." Jazzwise listed it at number three on their list of the 100 best jazz albums of all time in 2017. Coleman's quartet received a long and sometimes controversial engagement at the Five Spot Café in Manhattan. Leonard Bernstein, Lionel Hampton , and the Modern Jazz Quartet were impressed and offered encouragement. Hampton asked to perform with
124-585: A job in 1949 with a Silas Green from New Orleans traveling show and then with touring rhythm and blues shows. After a show in Baton Rouge, Louisiana , he was assaulted and his saxophone was destroyed. Coleman subsequently switched to alto saxophone, first playing it in New Orleans after the Baton Rouge incident; the alto would remain his primary instrument for the rest of his life. He then joined
155-417: A limited-edition CD set. As of 2022: (list may be incomplete) Ornette Coleman Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman (March 9, 1930 – June 11, 2015) was an American jazz saxophonist, trumpeter, violinist, and composer. He is best known as a principal founder of the free jazz genre, a term derived from his 1960 album Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation . His pioneering works often abandoned
186-616: A style sometimes called free funk . Jerry Garcia played guitar on three tracks on Virgin Beauty : "Three Wishes", "Singing in the Shower", and "Desert Players". Coleman joined the Grateful Dead on stage in 1993 during "Space" and stayed for "The Other One", "Stella Blue", Bobby Bland 's "Turn on Your Lovelight", and the encore "Brokedown Palace". In December 1985, Coleman and guitarist Pat Metheny recorded Song X . In 1990,
217-451: A two-bass quartet. In 1966, Coleman signed with Blue Note and released the two-volume live album At the "Golden Circle" Stockholm , featuring Izenzon and Moffett. Later that year, he recorded The Empty Foxhole with his ten year-old son Denardo Coleman and Haden; Freddie Hubbard and Shelly Manne regarded Denardo's appearance on the album as an ill-advised piece of publicity. Denardo later became his father's primary drummer in
248-878: The Harmolodic record label. His 2006 album Sound Grammar received the Pulitzer Prize for Music , making Coleman the second jazz musician ever to receive the honor. Coleman was born Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman on March 9, 1930, in Fort Worth, Texas , where he was raised. He attended I.M. Terrell High School in Fort Worth, where he participated in band until he was dismissed for improvising during John Philip Sousa 's march " The Washington Post ". He began performing R&B and bebop on tenor saxophone, and formed The Jam Jivers with Prince Lasha and Charles Moffett . Eager to leave town, he accepted
279-406: The harmony -based composition, tonality , chord changes, and fixed rhythm found in earlier jazz idioms. Instead, Coleman emphasized an experimental approach to improvisation rooted in ensemble playing and blues phrasing. Thom Jurek of AllMusic called him "one of the most beloved and polarizing figures in jazz history," noting that while "now celebrated as a fearless innovator and a genius, he
310-648: The 1970s, has adopted harmolodics and applied the theories to his approach to jazz and blues guitar (for example, Harmolodic Guitar with Strings ). In 1995, Coleman and his son, Denardo , established the Harmolodic record label, which had a marketing and distribution arrangement with Verve / PolyGram . The label released its first album, Coleman's Tone Dialing , in September 1995. Harmolodic went on to release new albums by Coleman and Jayne Cortez , and also reissued some of Coleman's previous albums. The label
341-716: The 1972 album Skies of America with the London Symphony Orchestra . Coleman, like Miles Davis before him, soon took to playing with electric instruments. The 1976 album Dancing in Your Head , Coleman's first recording with the group which later became known as Prime Time , prominently featured two electric guitarists. While this marked a stylistic departure for Coleman, the music retained aspects of what he called harmolodics . Coleman's 1980s albums with Prime Time such as Virgin Beauty and Of Human Feelings continued to use rock and funk rhythms in
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#1732775457284372-471: The 2007 Pulitzer Prize for music, making Coleman only the second jazz musician (after Wynton Marsalis ) to win the prize. Jazz pianist Joanne Brackeen stated in an interview with Marian McPartland that Coleman mentored her and gave her music lessons. Coleman married poet Jayne Cortez in 1954. The couple divorced in 1964. They had one son, Denardo , born in 1956. Coleman died of cardiac arrest in Manhattan on June 11, 2015, aged 85. His funeral
403-588: The SFJAZZ Collective performed compositions from the previous nine years. The SFJAZZ Collective convenes in San Francisco each spring for a three-week residency. Throughout this rehearsal period the octet workshops the season's new repertoire and interacts with the Bay Area community through SFJAZZ's education programs for youth and adults. Following each year's season, SFJAZZ Records releases
434-582: The band of Pee Wee Crayton and traveled with them to Los Angeles. He worked at various jobs in Los Angeles, including as an elevator operator, while pursuing his music career. Coleman found like-minded musicians in Los Angeles, such as Ed Blackwell , Bobby Bradford , Don Cherry , Charlie Haden , Billy Higgins , and Charles Moffett . Thanks to the intercession of friends and a successful audition, Ornette signed his first recording contract with LA-based Contemporary Records , which allowed him to sell
465-443: The box set Beauty Is a Rare Thing in 1993. In 1960, Coleman recorded Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation , which featured a double quartet, including Don Cherry and Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet, Haden and LaFaro on bass, and both Higgins and Blackwell on drums. The album was recorded in stereo, with a reed/brass/bass/drums quartet isolated in each stereo channel. Free Jazz was, at 37 minutes,
496-548: The city of Reggio Emilia , Italy, held a three-day "Portrait of the Artist" festival in Coleman's honor, in which he performed with Cherry, Haden, and Higgins. The festival also presented performances of his chamber music and Skies of America . In 1991, Coleman played on the soundtrack of David Cronenberg 's film Naked Lunch ; the orchestra was conducted by Howard Shore . Coleman released four records in 1995 and 1996, and for
527-533: The first time in many years worked regularly with piano players ( Geri Allen and Joachim Kühn ). Two 1972 Coleman recordings, "Happy House" and "Foreigner in a Free Land", were used in Gus Van Sant 's 2000 Finding Forrester . In September 2006, Coleman released the album Sound Grammar . Recorded live in Ludwigshafen , Germany, in 2005, it was his first album of new material in ten years. It won
558-412: The jazz world had been shaken up by Coleman's alien music. Some jazz musicians called him a fraud, while conductor Leonard Bernstein praised him. In 1959, Atlantic Records released Coleman's third studio album, The Shape of Jazz to Come . According to music critic Steve Huey, the album "was a watershed event in the genesis of avant-garde jazz, profoundly steering its future course and throwing down
589-443: The late 1970s and 1980s inspired a style of forward-thinking jazz-funk known as harmolodic funk . It is associated with avant-garde jazz and free jazz , although its implications extend beyond these limits. Coleman also used the name "Harmolodic" for both his first website and his record label. Coleman defined harmolodics as "the use of the physical and the mental of one's own logic made into an expression of sound to bring about
620-596: The late 1970s. Coleman formed another quartet. Haden, Garrison, and Elvin Jones appeared, and Dewey Redman joined the group, usually on tenor saxophone. On February 29, 1968, Coleman's quartet performed live with Yoko Ono at the Royal Albert Hall , and a recording from their rehearsal was subsequently included on Ono's 1970 album Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band as the track "AOS". He explored his interest in string textures on Town Hall, 1962 , culminating in
651-454: The longest recorded continuous jazz performance at the time and was one of Coleman's most controversial albums. In the January 18, 1962, issue of Down Beat magazine, Pete Welding gave the album five stars while John A. Tynan rated it zero stars. While Coleman had intended "free jazz" as simply an album title, free jazz was soon considered a new genre; Coleman expressed discomfort with
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#1732775457284682-449: The mid 1960s, Coleman left Atlantic for labels such as Blue Note and Columbia Records , and began performing with his young son Denardo Coleman on drums. He explored symphonic compositions with his 1972 album Skies of America , featuring the London Symphony Orchestra . In the mid-1970s, he formed the group Prime Time and explored electric jazz-funk and his concept of harmolodic music. In 1995, Coleman and his son Denardo founded
713-612: The musical sensation of unison executed by a single person or with a group". Applied to the particulars of music, this means that "harmony, melody, speed, rhythm, time and phrases all have equal position in the results that come from the placing and spacing of ideas". (see: aspects of music ) Harmolodics seeks to free musical compositions from any tonal center, allowing harmonic progression independent of traditional European notions of tension and release (see: atonality ). Harmolodics may loosely be defined as an expression of music in which harmony , movement of sound, and melody all share
744-532: The quartet; Bernstein helped Haden obtain a composition grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation . A young Lou Reed followed Coleman's quartet around New York City. Miles Davis said that Coleman was "all screwed up inside", although he later became a proponent of Coleman's innovations; Dizzy Gillespie remarked of Coleman that “I don’t know what he’s playing, but it’s not jazz." Coleman's early sound
775-453: The same or similar phrases , thus creating polytonality and heterophony . Coleman had been preparing a book called The Harmolodic Theory since at least the 1970s, but this remains unpublished. The only other known explanation of harmolodics that was written by Coleman is an article called "Prime Time for Harmolodics" (1983). Proponents include James Blood Ulmer and Jamaaladeen Tacuma . Ulmer, who played and toured with Coleman during
806-413: The same value. The general effect is that music achieves an immediately open expression, without being constrained by tonal limitations, rhythmic pre-determination, or harmonic rules. Ronald Radano suggests that Coleman's concepts of harmonic unison and harmolodics were influenced by Pierre Boulez 's theory of aleatory while Gunther Schuller suggested that harmolodics is based on the superimposition of
837-532: The term. After the Atlantic period, Coleman's music became more angular and engaged with the avant-garde jazz which had developed in part around his innovations. After his quartet disbanded, he formed a trio with David Izenzon on bass and Charles Moffett on drums, and began playing trumpet and violin in addition to the saxophone. His friendship with Albert Ayler influenced his development on trumpet and violin. Charlie Haden sometimes joined this trio to form
868-568: The tracks from his debut album, Something Else!!!! (1958), with Cherry, Higgins, Walter Norris , and Don Payne . During the same year he briefly belonged to a quintet led by Paul Bley that performed at a club in New York City (that band is recorded on Live at the Hilcrest Club 1958 ). By the time Tomorrow Is the Question! was recorded soon after with Cherry, bassists Percy Heath and Red Mitchell , and drummer Shelly Manne ,
899-534: Was a three-hour event with performances and speeches by several of his collaborators and contemporaries. McClintic Sphere , a character in Thomas Pynchon 's 1963 novel V. , is modeled on Coleman and Thelonious Monk . Harmolodic#Record label Harmolodics is a musical philosophy and method of musical composition and improvisation developed by American jazz saxophonist-composer Ornette Coleman . His work following this philosophy during
930-418: Was due in part to his use of a plastic saxophone ; he had purchased it in Los Angeles in 1954 because he was unable to afford a metal saxophone at the time. On his Atlantic recordings, Coleman's sidemen were Cherry on cornet or pocket trumpet ; Charlie Haden, Scott LaFaro , and then Jimmy Garrison on bass; and Higgins or Ed Blackwell on drums. Coleman's complete recordings for the label were collected on
961-461: Was initially regarded by peers and critics as rebellious, disruptive, and even a fraud." Born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas , Coleman taught himself to play the saxophone when he was a teenager. He began his musical career playing in local R&B and bebop groups, and eventually formed his own group in Los Angeles, featuring members such as Ed Blackwell , Don Cherry , Charlie Haden , and Billy Higgins . In November 1959, his quartet began