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// Ornette Coleman

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America  > United States

// Ornette Coleman

Credited with kick starting the Free Jazz movement, American jazz legend Ornette Coleman broke many musical conventions. Creating his own complex system for composing and improvising which he called ‘harmolodics’, he sought to release rhythm, harmony and melody from given rules. His philosophy was to encourage free expression and to ‘blow what you feel…to play the thought’. Born in 1930 in Fort Worth Texas, Ornette Coleman taught himself to play saxophone and read music by age 14 and the following year formed his first band. Setting out on the road when he was 19 years old, the early 1950s saw him in Los Angeles where he met and played with various like-minded musicians including trumpeter Don Cherry and bassist Charlie Haden. Later moving to New York, his 1958 debut album Something Else was a watershed recording. In the 1970s, while travelling around Nigeria and Morocco he studied and played with many local musicians, and recorded with the Master Musicians of Jajouka. Over his long career he has released 27 albums, many considered jazz classics, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2006 for his album Sound Grammar.

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>> The Master Musicians of Jajouka
>> Omar Sosa
>> David Murray
>> Miguel 'Angá' Díaz

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>> Ornette Coleman’s Meltdown

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