Ornette Coleman for a Sunday – From the Jazz Jamboree Festival at Congress Hall in Warsaw on October 23, 1993 and broadcast by Polski Radio.
Born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas, Ornette 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 jazz group in Los Angeles, featuring members such as Ed Blackwell, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins. In November 1959, his quartet began a controversial residency at the Five Spot Café in New York City and he released the influential album The Shape of Jazz to Come on Atlantic Records. Coleman’s subsequent Atlantic releases in the early 1960s would profoundly impact the direction of jazz in that decade, and his compositions “Lonely Woman” and “Broadway Blues” became standards cited as important early works in free jazz.
In the mid 1960s, Coleman left Atlantic for other labels, including Blue Note and Columbia, and began performing with his young son Denardo Coleman on drums. He explored symphonic composition with his 1972 album Skies of America, featuring the London Symphony Orchestra. In the mid-1970s, he formed the group Prime Time, which performed electric jazz-funk and elaborated on his theory of harmolodics. In 1995, he and Denardo founded the Harmolodic record label. Coleman’s 2006 album Sound Grammar received the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Music, making him the second jazz musician ever to receive the honor.
Thanks to Wikipedia for the bio information, in case you didn’t already know. If you do, you’re way past this by now and already diving into the concert.
Enjoy.
