Ornette Coleman

Ornette Coleman – Falling (2005/2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 50:18 minutes | 533 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Concert Archive – Delta Music

Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman (March 9, 1930 – June 11, 2015) was an American jazz saxophonist, trumpeter, violinist, and composer. He was 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 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. 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 was initially regarded by peers and critics as rebellious, disruptive, and even a fraud.”
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Ornette Coleman – Twins (1971/2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 43:24 minutes | 1,70 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino Atlantic

Twins is an album credited to jazz composer and saxophonist Ornette Coleman, released by Atlantic Records in 1971. The album was assembled without Coleman’s input, comprising outtakes from recording sessions of 1959 to 1961 for The Shape of Jazz to Come, This Is Our Music, Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation, and Ornette! Sessions for “Monk and the Nun” took place at Radio Recorders in Hollywood, California; for “First Take” at A&R Studios in New York City, and all others at Atlantic Studios also in Manhattan. The track “First Take” was a first attempt at “Free Jazz” from the album of the same name.
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Ornette Coleman – The Shape Of Jazz To Come (1959/2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 38:15 minutes | 1,33 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino Atlantic

The Shape Of Jazz To Come is Ornette Coleman’s 1959 masterpiece and debut for Atlantic Records. It marks his first album featuring his working quartet of Don Cherry, Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins. In 2012, it was inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry. This Free-Jazz classic is included on Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” and Vibe’s “100 Essential Albums of the 20th Century.” Standouts include “Lonely Woman” and “Congeniality”.

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Ornette Coleman – The Atlantic Years (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 06:46:05 minutes | 14,68 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino Atlantic

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. 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. Albums included: 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).
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Ornette Coleman – The Shape of Jazz To Come (Mono) (1959/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 38:09 minutes | 671 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Atlantic Records

The Shape of Jazz to Come is the third album by jazz musician Ornette Coleman.Though Coleman initially wished for the album to be titled Focus on Sanity, after one of the songs on the album, it was ultimately titled The Shape of Jazz to Come at the urging of Atlantic producer Nesuhi Ertegun, who felt that the title would give consumers “an idea about the uniqueness of the LP.” Released on Atlantic Records in 1959, it is his debut on the label and his first album featuring his working quartet including himself, trumpeter Don Cherry, bassist Charlie Haden, and drummer Billy Higgins. The recording session for the album took place on May 22, 1959, at Radio Recorders in Hollywood, California. Two outtakes from the session, “Monk and the Nun” and “Just for You,” would later be released respectively on the 1970s compilations Twins and The Art of the Improvisers. In 2012, the Library of Congress added the album to the National Recording Registry.

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Ornette Coleman – Something Else!!! The Music of Ornette Coleman (1958/2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 42:43 minutes | 859 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RevOla

The 1959 debut by alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman revolutionized the jazz world and quickly earned a reputation as one of the most important and controversial recordings of the era. Credited as a crucial work of early “free jazz,” the album featured a lineup of then up-and-coming jazz stars: trumpeter Don Cherry, pianist Walter Norris, bassist Don Payne, and drummer Billy Higgins.

Coleman would go on to become a titan of 20th Century music–the recipient of a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a Pulitzer Prize for music. Something Else!!! is simply an essential document of the jazz era–some of the most forward-leaning, progressive music ever put to tape.

This is exciting, courageous music that remains vital today. -Nat Hentoff, music critic

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Ornette Coleman – Ornette On Tenor (1962/2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 41:07 minutes | 1,57 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino Atlantic

Ornette on Tenor is the eighth album by the American jazz composer and saxophonist Ornette Coleman, released in 1962 on Atlantic Records, his sixth and final one for the label. It features Coleman playing tenor saxophone rather than his usual alto, and bassist Jimmy Garrison before he joined the John Coltrane Quartet. This would be the last record by the Coleman Quartet started in the 1950s; he would disband this group and form the Coleman Trio later in the year. Recording sessions took place on March 22 and 27, 1961, at Atlantic Studios in New York City. One outtake from the March 27 session, “Harlem’s Manhattan,” would appear on the 1970 compilation The Art of the Improvisers.

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Ornette Coleman – New York Is Now! (1968/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 40:01 minutes | 1,59 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Blue Note Records

Originally issued as Blue Note BST 84287

“In preparing these hi def remasters, we were very conscientious about maintaining the feel of the original releases while adding a previously unattainable transparency and depth. It now sounds like you’ve set up your chaise lounge right in the middle of Phil Ramone’s A&R Studios!” – Blue Note President, Don Was.

New York Is Now! can be described musically as being more modally driven rather than harmonically so. Somewhat out of his element, Coleman rises to the occasion, taking the rest of the band along for the ride.

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Ornette Coleman – Change of the Century (1959/2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 41:25 minutes | 1,42 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino Atlantic

Ornette Coleman suggests in his liner notes for this 1960 release that “there is no single right way to play jazz.” He and this, his great quartet (with Don Cherry, pocket trumpet; Charlie Haden, bass; and Billy Higgins, drums), fully confirm that statement and dismiss the railings of Coleman’s detractors. This classic’s assurance and achievement fully justify its cocky title. In its free group improvising, as Coleman puts it, “each member goes his own way and still adds tellingly to the group endeavor.” The later formalization of that approach, as “harmolodics,” was from this point inevitable. The selections include tunes like “Ramblin’” and “Una Muy Bonita” that would be standards today if more musicians had deigned to venture down the paths that Coleman blazed

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Ornette Coleman – Ornette! (1962/2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 31:36 minutes | 361 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RevOla

Ornette! is the seventh album by alto saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman, released in February 1962 on Atlantic Records. The album features Scott LaFaro in place of Charlie Haden, who had left the Quartet but would work again with Coleman in the future.
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Ornette Coleman – Genesis of Genius: The Contemporary Recordings (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:24:25 minutes | 3,45 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Craft Recordings

In the span of 12 months, Ornette Coleman released two albums on Lester Koenig’s L.A.-based Contemporary Records. Known as one of the primary homes of the cool West Coast sound, the label was something of an unlikely home for Ornette, who shared little in common with the other musicians on the roster besides a Los Angeles mailing address. But Koenig gave the saxophonist a shot when most other labels wouldn’t, and gave him the resources to document his rapidly developing approach to jazz composition and improvisation. Of course, this approach was not greeted with universal acclaim; in fact, most of the jazz cognosce gnti were outright hostile to it, and the albums—Something Else!!! and Tomorrow is the Question! (remastered and repackaged in 2022 as Genesis of Genius: The Contemporary Recordings)—had a far less seismic impact than they deserved. While Ornette would quickly move on to Atlantic Records (his debut was released the same month as Tomorrow is the Question!) recording a string of iconic albums in the process, the groundwork he was laying on the two Contemporary albums was constrained not by ability or vision, but by more pragmatic factors.
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