Collection: Don Cherry

Don Cherry took the freedom of the Ornette Coleman quartet and spent the next thirty-five years extending it outward. The pocket trumpet was his signature, a smaller, brighter horn that suited his bent phrases and his preference for short, voice-like lines over fast technical runs. After Coleman, he co-led The Avant-Garde with John Coltrane (Atlantic, 1961), recorded a trio of Blue Note albums beginning with Complete Communion (1965), and then went further. Relocating to Sweden with his wife Moki, he absorbed Tibetan chant, Indian raga, West African doussn'gouni, and North African modal shapes, all of it folded into a music he refused to label. The duo Mu sessions with Ed Blackwell on BYG Actuel. Codona with Naná Vasconcelos and Collin Walcott on ECM. Old and New Dreams reuniting the Coleman alumni on Black Saint and ECM. Brown Rice as a cosmic solo statement. The Lush Life Don Cherry section gathers the European and Japanese pressings where his catalogue lives best: BYG Actuel originals, ECM editions, and the King Records reissues of his Paris sessions for the Japanese market.