Collection: Ornette Coleman

Ornette Coleman was an American jazz saxophonist, trumpeter, violinist and composer best known as a principal founder of the free jazz genre, a term derived from his 1960 album Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation. Born March 9, 1930 in Fort Worth, Texas, he taught himself to play the saxophone when he was a teenager. His pioneering works often abandoned the harmony-based composition, tonality, chord changes and fixed rhythm found in earlier jazz idioms, instead emphasising an experimental approach to improvisation rooted in ensemble playing and blues phrasing.

In November 1959, his quartet began a controversial residency at the Five Spot jazz club in New York City and released The Shape of Jazz to Come, his debut for Atlantic Records. The album was a watershed event in the genesis of avant-garde jazz, profoundly steering its future course. His compositions 'Lonely Woman' and 'Broadway Blues' became genre standards cited as important early works in free jazz. In the mid-1970s, he formed the group Prime Time and explored electric jazz-funk and his concept of harmolodic music. His 2006 album Sound Grammar received the Pulitzer Prize for Music, making Coleman the second jazz musician ever to receive the honour. He died on June 11, 2015 in New York City.