ORNETTE Press Kit.8.7.2012 - Shirley Clarke

Jamaaladeen Tacuma
(June 11, 1956 — Present)
A gifted and spellbinding musician, Jamaaladeen Tacuma has enchanted audiences for
years. As a young teen, Tacuma played with organist Charles Earland before attracting the
attention of Ornette Coleman at just 19 years of age. With Tacuma’s funky rhythms and
lyrical melodies, Prime Time took on the unique identity.
Tacuma has led a successful solo career, releasing critically acclaimed albums as well as
collaborations with other jazz musicians like Wolfgang Puschnig, James Blood Ulmer, James
Carter, Courtney Pine and Nona Hendryx. His 1988 album Jukebox was nominated for a
Grammy award (Best Jazz Album of the Year).
While relatively reclusive in the 90s, Tacuma released a track, “Mirakle,” in 2000 that
Allmusic called one of the “most important recordings” of the year. Tacuma received a Pew
Fellowship in the Arts in 2011. He has released three solo albums within the last five years
and performs frequently around the world, to ever-­‐increasing fans of all ages.
Charlie Haden
(August 6, 1937 — Present)
A legendary jazz bassist in the ranks with Charles Mingus and Paul Chambers, Charlie
Haden has had a storied career spanning seven decades with no signs of slowing down.
Born August 6, 1937 in Sheandoah, Iowa, Haden was raised as a singer in a musical family.
After contracting a mild form of polio at the age of 15 that damaged his vocal cords, he
developed an interest in jazz music that he channeled into playing the double bass. With
ambitions to make it in Los Angeles, Haden raised money as the house bassist in Springfield,
Missouri’s Ozark Jubilee.
Haden’s 1957 move to Los Angeles started strong, playing with free jazz pioneer Paul Bley
before making history with Ornette Coleman with 1959’s The Shape of Jazz to Come. With
nine albums as Coleman’s double bassist, including the highly influential Free Jazz: A
Collective Improvisation, he set the amorphous template for avant-­‐garde jazz that few
musicians have harnessed to such ability.
A prolific musician, Haden lead the Liberation Music Orchestra, a free jazz collective that
experimented in political, gospel, Latino, African and various other types of music, in the
1970s. He released four albums with the group and later started the jazz group Old and
New Dreams with fellow Coleman collaborators, Don Cherry, Ed Blackwell and Dewey
Redman. From 1976 to 2008, Haden released 22 solo albums, three of which won Grammy
Awards for Best Jazz Instrumental and Best Latin Jazz Album.
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