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Coleman, Ornette
2 articles on Coleman, Ornette
Coleman, Ornette
Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition
Word Count: 1090 Includes: Bibliography1930–
African American alto saxophonist, composer, and free jazz innovator. Nearly forty years after he appeared on the Jazz scene, Ornette Coleman remained a controversial and innovative musician. He is, along with John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, and Cecil Taylor, one of the major figures in the 1960s jazz avant-garde. Indeed, only Coltrane had a greater influence on the recent development of jazz. During the 1960s, Coleman was central to the rise of free jazz, which represented the first significant break with the conventions of Bebop or modern jazz that crystallized in the 1940s. In the mid-1970s, he formed the group Prime Time, which combined free jazz improvisation and heavy rhythms based on Funk to create a new subgenre of “free funk.”Born in Fort Worth, Texas, Coleman was largely self-taught as ...
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Source: African American National Biography
Word Count: 1821 Includes: Further Reading | Discography(19 Mar. 1930– ), jazz innovator, saxophonist, composer, and trumpeter, was born Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman, in Fort Worth, Texas, the youngest of four children of Randolph Coleman, a cook, mechanic, and baseball player, and Rosa (maiden name unknown), a clerk and seamstress. Ornette's early life was marked by family tragedy: his oldest brother, Allen, died in the 1940s; his oldest sister, Vera, died as an adolescent; and his father died when Ornette was only seven. His surviving sister, Truvenza Coleman Leach, was a trombonist and vocalist who performed under the name Trudy Coleman.Ornette began playing the alto saxophone in 1944after his mother purchased an instrument with the agreement that he would get a job. A year later, at age fifteen, he began to play professionally. The saxophonists ...
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