page_title: Ornette Coleman
section_title: 1960s–70s: Avant-garde and harmolodic funk
hierarchical_section_title: Ornette Coleman / Biography / 1960s–70s: Avant-garde and harmolodic funk
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Sigma 7 Ornette Coleman Quartet
context_page_description: Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman was an American jazz saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter, and composer. In the 1960s, he was one of the founders of free jazz, a term he invented for his album Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation. His "Broadway Blues" and "Lonely Woman" have become standards and are cited as important early works in free jazz. His album Sound Grammar received the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Music.
context_section_description: After the Atlantic period and into the early part of the 1970s, Coleman's music became more angular and engaged with the avant-garde jazz which had developed in part around his innovations.
  After his quartet disbanded, he formed a trio with David Izenzon on bass and Charles Moffett on drums. He extended the sound of his music, introducing string players and playing trumpet and violin, which he played left-handed. He had little conventional musical technique and used the instruments to make large, unrestrained gestures. His friendship with Albert Ayler influenced his development on trumpet and violin. Charlie Haden sometimes joined this trio to form a two-bass quartet.
  Coleman signed with Blue Note and recorded At the Golden Circle Stockholm. In 1966, he recorded The Empty Foxhole with his son, Denardo Coleman, who was ten years old. Freddie Hubbard and Shelly Manne regarded this as an ill-advised piece of publicity on Coleman's part. Despite his youth, Denardo Coleman had studied drumming for several years. His technique was unrefined but enthusiastic, owing more to pulse-oriented free jazz drummers like Sunny Murray than to bebop drummers. He became his father's primary drummer in the late 1970s.
  Coleman formed another quartet. Haden, Garrison, and Elvin Jones appeared, and Dewey Redman joined the group, usually on tenor saxophone. On February 29, 1968 in a group with Haden, Ed Blackwell, and David Izenzon Coleman performed live with Yoko Ono at Albert Hall. One song was included on the album Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band (1970)
  He continued to explore his interest in string textures – from Town Hall, 1962, culminating with the Skies of America album in 1972. (Sometimes this had a practical value, as it facilitated his group's appearance in the UK in 1965, where jazz musicians were under a quota arrangement but classical performers were exempt.)
  Coleman, like Miles Davis before him, took to playing with electrified instruments. The 1976 funk album Dancing in Your Head, Coleman's first recording with the group which later became known as Prime Time, prominently featured electric guitars. While this marked a stylistic departure for Coleman, the music maintained certain similarities to his earlier work. These performances had the same angular melodies and simultaneous group improvisations – what Joe Zawinul referred to as "nobody solos, everybody solos" and what Coleman called harmolodics – and although the nature of the pulse was altered, Coleman's rhythmic approach was not.
caption: Coleman in 1971
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "683", "Image ImageLength": "1024", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2014:09:12 11:12:29", "Image ImageDescription": "Sigma 7 Ornette Coleman", "Image Make": "Nikon", "Image Model": "LS-4000", "Image Software": "PaintShop Pro 17,00", "Image Artist": "Jean-Pierre Roche", "Image Copyright": "Jean-Pierre Roche", "Image InterColorProfile": "[]", "Image IPTC/NAA": "[28, 2, 5, 0, 23, 79, 114, 110, 101, 116, 116, 101, 32, 67, 111, 108, 101, 109, 97, 110, ... ]", "Image ExifOffset": "206", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "GPS GPSLatitudeRef": "N", "GPS GPSLatitude": "[44, 252789/5000, 0]", "GPS GPSLongitudeRef": "W", "GPS GPSLongitude": "[0, 69443/2000, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "272", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4033", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5412", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "683", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1024", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2014:09:11 11:00:54"}