Ornette Coleman
- Buy Tickets
- Saturday, June 7 at 8 pm
- Flynn MainStage
- $75 (Gold Circle), $47, $37
*Special discount tickets available for students 18 and under – Call the box office for details.
Ornette Coleman, alto saxophone, trumpet and violin; Denardo Coleman, drums; Tony Falanga, acoustic bass; Al MacDowell, electric bass; Charnette Moffat, electric bass
“One of the last of the truly imposing figures from a generation of jazz players that was full of them.”
—The New York Times
For more than five decades, saxophonist/composer Ornette Coleman has played a defining role in American music. The major innovator of the free jazz movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Coleman has led countless formations—from duos to symphony orchestras, electric and acoustic—and his sound, which defies categorization, is a riveting, combustible mixture of the aggressive and the lyrical. His revolutionary approach to harmony and chord progression was far less rigid than that of the swing or bebop performers he began playing with, and critics hailed his seminal record, The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959), as a “watershed event in the genesis of avant-garde jazz, profoundly steering its future course.” For his essential vision and innovation, Coleman has been rewarded with numerous accolades, including the MacArthur Genius Award, a Grammy® Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Music, and a 2007 Grammy® nomination for Best Instrumental Jazz Album for his most recent release, Sound Grammar. His work ignites passion in devoted listeners and his creativity has attracted champions and collaborators as wide-ranging as Paul Bley, Pat Metheny, Jerry Garcia and Lou Reed. Coleman’s unique ensemble features three bassists with “walloping rhythmic support from Coleman’s son Denardo, on drums, and the leader’s occasionally eccentric stylings on trumpet and violin” (The New Yorker).
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