Ornette Coleman @ Bozar
Blog
Written by BrusselsLife Team -
23 Oct 2008, 00:00
(Updated: 13 Dec 2012, 07:59)
The legendary inventor of free jazz has made a remarkable comeback. Sound Grammar (2006), his first record in ten years, won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Music. This was followed in 2007 by a Grammy in recognition of his entire career. Seventy-eight years young, the multi-instrumentalist Coleman is still full of beans. This is a rare opportunity for his European fans and other lovers of bluesy melodies and of sheer joy in music-making.
For more than five decades, saxophonist/composer Ornette Colemanhas played a pivotally seminal role in American music. The inventor of what has been called "free jazz," Coleman belongs to that rare breed of artists/thinkers whose influence extends far beyond the realm of their chosen medium. Always putting his remarkable virtuosity at the service of melody and emotion, he has had and continues to have a powerful impact on how musicians play, improvise, and compose, on how music lovers listen, on the color and sound of music the world over.
While Coleman has led a wide variety of formations, from duos to symphony orchestras, electric and acoustic, his basic musical concepthas been remarkably consistent. He is interested in writing andperforming music that allows all players to give free reign to theirimagination and ideas. His musical system, which he named "harmolodics"and now prefers to call "sound grammar," is a remarkable exercise inapplied democracy. All voices are given equal weight; all musicians arefree to make deeply individual contributions while listening closely toone another, at once giving & taking space for their respective creativity.
Now 76 years young, Ornette continues to search, to study, to learn,to ask questions and to compose new music for every concert he gives. His current quartet, documented on SOUND GRAMMAR. The New York Times review for the quartet's recent and stunning show at Carnegie enthused: "And here was Mr.Coleman's sound: still unusual and provocative, a thing with its ownbreath and life force." Bozar & Greenhouse Talent
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