Jazz musician Ornette Coleman deceased at the age of 85 – nrc.nl

Ornette Coleman before his appearance in his dressing room on the second day of North Sea Jazz (2010). Photos Andreas Terlaak

The American jazz saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman is deceased at the age of 85. That has let his agent Ken Weinstein know to press service told AFP. He died in New York, where he lived most of his career.

Coleman was born in 1930 in Fort Worth, Texas. He taught himself to play saxophone in mostly used the alto sax. Coleman is known as one of the innovators in jazz. His album The Shape of Jazz to Come is seen as one of the first albums in the avant-garde jazz history. In 2007 he received a Grammy for his contribution to music.

Due to the work of Coleman in the late fifties and early sixties jazz took more distance from the rules on harmony and rhythm. The music of Coleman, says New York Times , was to rally the term highly informed folk : deceptively simple melodies out chord progressions and recorded melodies. It was the free jazz, wrote Peter Delpeut in 2010. NRC Handelsblad (€):

Down and out in LA made the twenty-four Ornette it is certainly not easy when he bought a saxophone made of plastic. He was looking for a playing style beyond the straitjacket of fixed harmonies with the impulse of the melody had been leading. As simple as it seems now, so difficult was that in the fifties. And certainly the conservative jazz scene in Los Angeles was not waiting for that.

Listen to The Shape of Jazz to Come from 1959.

In 2010, Coleman was a special guest at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam. The then octogenarian musician appeared in multicolored pyjamapak and would This is Our Music Now come to play, a project with bassist Charlie Haden which would look back on the eponymous album from 1960. But Haden stayed long in the wings, and Coleman made with his band typically elusive and raging rambles on sax and trumpet, wrote NRC music editor Amanda Kuyper (€):

The setup was remarkable: the far left on the main stage acoustic bass and Coleman. Far right the drums and electric bass. It seemed as if there were two separate bands play. Bassists inspire Coleman. The strokes with a bow or plucking the strings and number two playing funky electric. If the first bass is sitting on the rhythm, the second focuses on the melody. When Haden finally took place behind the stage, it was more of a musical exchange pleasantries

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Ornette Coleman