ORNETTE Press Kit.8.7.2012 - Shirley Clarke

eschewing tonality and prior structures like bebop and modal jazz while embracing
dissonance, ensemble synchronization and lucid improvisation.
Ornette continues to tour the world and win over acclaim by new generations of musicians
and critics. His music, style and, above all, ideas are still revolutionary to this day. Ornette
Coleman is one of the foremost innovators in 20 th century jazz history. In 1991, Canadian
director David Cronenberg tapped Coleman to perform Howard Shore’s score for Naked
Lunch. The acclaimed film was adapted from the Beat masterpiece by William S. Burroughs,
an acquaintance of Coleman who appears in Ornette: Made in America. In 2004, Coleman
won the prestigious Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for “a man or woman who has made an
outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and
understanding of life.” In 2007 he won a lifetime achievement Grammy award and the
Pulitzer Prize for Music, the first jazz musician to do so. In May 2010 the University of
Michigan bestowed an honorary doctorate on Coleman besides President Barack Obama.
Any interview reveals an unquestionable genius and curious provocateur; his harmolodic
theory crams all the ineffable thoughts in his mind under one umbrella ideology. But there
is an innocent naivety to Coleman that he has freely admitted. When first picking up the Eb
alto saxophone that he taught himself, Coleman misinterpreted the transposing necessary
for his instrument, wherein an ABCDEFG concert scale is not his sax’s standard concert
scale (CDEFGAB is.) Instead of starting from scratch, Coleman took this misunderstanding
in stride, experimenting with standards of tonality that he would eventually raze. Ornette
Coleman is a genius, revolutionary, philosopher, citizen, father, and, above all, a free spirit.
“I didn't need to worry about keys, chords, melody if I had that emotion that brought tears
and laughter to people's hearts.” — Esquire, 2009.
Denardo Coleman
(April 16, 1956 — Present)
The gifted son of Ornette Coleman and Jayne Cortez, Denardo Coleman has furthered his
father’s legacy and created his own with prodigious skill and an innate connection to
harmolodic theory. Starting drums at the age of six, Denardo learned much from his father,
developing from a young age a talent for avant-­‐garde jazz.
At only ten years of age, he played drums on Ornette’s 1966 album The Empty Foxhole.
From 1966 to 2006 and every decade in between, Denardo has performed on ten of his
father’s albums and played alongside other respected Coleman collaborators such as James
Blood Ulmer, Jamaaladeen Tacuma and Pat Metheny. As a consistent member of Prime
Time, he has been instrumental in the development of free and funk jazz over the 1970s
and 80s, providing the rhythmic groundwork for Ornette and the rest of the band’s
innovation.
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