Happy Birthday, Ornette Coleman

Jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman turns 83 today. Coleman, who was born on March 9, 1930, in Fort Worth, Texas, is best known as one of the great innovators in the "free jazz" movement of the 1960s.

Coleman's music, which was quite controversial, focused on the mood or feeling of the melody and moved away from the chord changes that had dominated jazz in the 1950s and 1960s. As Coleman said, "Let's play the music, not the background."

In his book, The 101 Best Jazz Albums, Len Lyons recommends two Ornette Coleman albums, both of which are available on CD:

• Ornette Coleman: The Shape of Jazz to Come (Atlantic), available from Amazon.com. Lyons calls this "perhaps the boldest album in the history of jazz" and "certainly ... the first to depend primarily upon collective improvisation."
  
• Ornette Coleman: Free Jazz (Atlantic), available from Amazon.com.
  

Coleman's quartet plays "Lonely Woman," from "The Shape of Jazz to Come," here:

Robert
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