Ornette on Tenor

Ornette Coleman | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 16, 1993)
• Original Release Date: 1962
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Rhino / Wea
• ASIN: B00000333H
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #543,804 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ornette can do it all, February 1, 2002

By 

Il Dottore "PinkFlag" (Buffalo, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ornette on Tenor (Audio CD)

First of all, we aren't going to listen to the advice of anyone who says "Lookit" (anyone who says lookit and gives one star to ornette probably has a mullet). This album is amazing. If you have the other atlantic albums, you'll want this (or just get the box set). Apparently Ornette started on Tenor; his tone is edgy and raspy (like a blues singer) but also beautiful. There is lots of new stuff here if you want to follow ornette's development. FOr instance, Mapa is a sublime 9 min. group improvisation. Interestingly, Ornette never had the quartet improvise together (only the double quartet), perhaps becouse of the close range of the trumpet and alto, but here, with the lower range of the tenor, it works wonderfully. This is great experimental jazz but at the end of the day it is just great music by any standards...that is, any open-minded standards.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars pure unadulterated BRILLIANCE, July 3, 2003

By 

kaysixone (Manchester, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ornette on Tenor (Audio CD)

Ornette Coleman is undoubtedly one of the greatest and most influential musicians of the last century - but like many true originals he had to endure a great deal of hostility when he first appeared on the scene in the late 1950s from those who either resented, didn't understand or just didn't like the way he chose to ignore rules which they considered fundamental to jazz (and which many established musicians had devoted countless hours of practice to learning)....

Coleman's musical vision (which came to be known as harmolodics) defies easy categorisation and his own attempts to explain it have been frustratingly vague. Basically he wanted to free his playing from the restrictions of harmonic and rhythmic conventions prevalent in the jazz of the 1950s - and crucially, to create improvisations using the melodic line as a starting point which were not dependent on chord changes. Although his name will always be associated with "free jazz", Coleman's music is far from "free" and contains an abundance of logic, melody and rhythm, as well as being deeply rooted in the blues.

Despite causing so many waves among the jazz establishment (or maybe because of it) Coleman also managed to attract a hardcore of devotees and win the support of other young musicians looking for new ideas and fresh approaches to playing (Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, Scott La Faro, Billy Higgins, Ed Blackwell and others). The core of his most influential output was recorded during numerous sessions for the Atlantic label between 1959 and 1961, including groundbreaking albums like "The shape of jazz to come", "Change of the century", "This is our music", "Free jazz" etc....

The complete recordings can be found in chronological order on the 6 cd set "Beauty is a rare thing", but if your budget doesn't stretch that far, "Ornette on tenor" from 1961 is as good an example as any of Coleman's music from this period. Although he usually plays alto sax, Coleman switched to the tenor for this album because in his opinion "the best statements Negroes have made of what their soul is have been on tenor saxophone"....

Like nearly all the Atlantic sessions, it's a quartet recording and features sublime performances from the leader with great support from Don Cherry on trumpet, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Ed Blackwell on drums. With no piano in the line-up (the omission of which was still pretty revolutionary in those days) Garrison and Blackwell's role is as much melodic and interactive as it is rhythmic - and their choice of phrases sometimes suggest new directions for Coleman and Cherry, who both play with incredible fluency and almost telepathic understanding. Coleman's expressive solos make full use of the tenor's deeper range, while Cherry's contributions are generally more subtle (particularly on the awesome "Cross breeding", when after the leader's stunning solo there's not much left to say).

There seems to be an endless amount of space in this music - so many melodic possibilities for the players to explore and four decades on it still sounds remarkably fresh and contemporary. Not just great jazz but great music, period. Free your mind....

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gutty, November 26, 2007

By 

Evan Chandlee (Paris, France) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ornette on Tenor (Audio CD)

Although Jimmy Garrison finally broke with Ornette, he was an remarkably appropriate bass player for this, the tenor session. On cuts such as Eos and Enfant, Garrison's mainly lower register work with frequent vamps and pedal points provides an elastic underpinning that drives every tune and solo. His profound & incredibly elastic groove, adventurous but always melodic and irresistibly "straight ahead", was just what Ornette needed to give the tenor 4tet a different sound. Blackwell also contributes to the depth of the 4tet sound by playing as much on the skins as on the cymbals, never far from the snare & toms, maintaining a swinging yet ever changing groove across the entire set. On Ecars the group is really singing. Ornette is as inspired, earthy and lyrical on cuts such as Cross Breeding and Enfant - check his leap out of the short tune on the latter- as he ever has been on alto. Thanks in great part to the Garrison-Blackwell empathy, the groove is innovative, daring even, as each 4 and 8 measure segment unfolds, yet is always precise, cohesive & exciting.