Shape of Jazz to Come

Ornette Coleman - Beauty Is a Rare Thing: The Complete Atlantic Recordings (1993) {6CD Box Set Rhino R2 71410 rec 1959-1961}
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© 1959-61, 1993 Atlantic / Rhino | R2 71410
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Free Jazz / Saxophone

While it's true this set has been given the highest rating AMG awards, it comes with a qualifier: the rating is for the music and the package, not necessarily the presentation. Presentation is a compiler's nightmare in the case of artists like John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, who recorded often and at different times and had most of their recordings issued from the wealth of material available at the time a record was needed rather than culling an album from a particular session.

One of the outlets for bassist Charlie Haden's multifarious musical interests is the politically charged, progressive Liberation Music Orchestra. In July 1992, the Orchestra - a powerhouse of some of the top names in jazz - brought the collaborative sound of their album Dream Keeper to the Montreal International Jazz Festival. The African National Congress anthem, 'Nkosi Sikelel'I Afrika,' opens the program and sets the tone, with a blistering solo from the alto sax of Makanda Ken McIntyre and a more reflective one by tenor giant Joe Lovano.

Ornette Coleman Quintet - Complete Live At The Hillcrest Club (1958) {2007 Gambit Records 69272}
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© 1958, 2007 Gambit Records | 69272
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Modern Creative / Saxophone

Ornette Coleman's epic 1959 LPs The Shape of Jazz to Come and Change of the Century were pivot points in modern post-bop jazz and early creative music. This recording is a prelude to those epics, a live two-night engagement in October of 1958 at the Hillcrest Club in Los Angeles. The Coleman quintet, with trumpeter Don Cherry, bassist Charlie Haden, and drummer Billy Higgins, plus a then-young pianist Paul Bley, sets up that new shape of jazz. This eight-selection set features three of Coleman's signature originals, two standards, and three lesser-known, fairly rare pieces that Coleman did at the time.

While the Norwegian jazz scene has been pursuing its own course for decades, the period of 1996-1997 represented a significant watershed, a milestone where an entirely new kind of music emerged, linked to jazz but distanced considerably—some might say completely, but they'd be mistaken—from its roots in the American tradition. Three seminal and groundbreaking albums were released within a year of each other: trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær's Khmer (ECM, 1997); noise improv group Supersilent's 1- 3 (Rune Grammofon, 1997); and, beating the others by a year, keyboardist Bugge Wesseltoft's aptly titled New Conception of Jazz (Jazzland, 1996). All three explored the integration of electronics, disparate cultural references, programming, turntables and—especially in the case of Supersilent, the most avant-garde of the three— noise, to create aural landscapes that were innovative, otherworldly and refreshingly new.

Miles Davis - Bitches Brew (1969) [2CD] {2006 DSD Japan Mini LP Edition, SICP-1220/21}
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© 2006 Sony Music Japan / Columbia | SICP 1220/21
Jazz / Fusion / Jazz Rock

Among the most controversial recordings in the history of jazz, BITCHES BREW was Miles Davis' shot across the bow of jazz insularity, a bold statement about jazz's ability to draw upon elements of popular culture, without mitigating its spirit of spontaneous invention. Much as Ornette Coleman's THE SHAPE OF JAZZ TO COME set a new standard for harmonic and melodic freedom a decade before, BITCHES BREW signaled a sea change in jazz.

Miles Davis - The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions (1970) {4CD Set Columbia CK 65577~80 rel 2004}
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© 1970, 2004 Sony Music / Columbia / Legacy | CK 65577~80
Jazz / Fusion / Jazz-Funk / Trumpet

THE COMPLETE BITCHES BREW SESSIONS won the 2000 Grammy Award for Best Boxed Recording Package. Released in 1970, BITCHES BREW undeniably changed the shape of jazz to come. Fundamentalists groan that it diluted the form, bringing on the fusion plague and sowing the germs of smooth jazz. But a cross-section of adventurous listeners recognized it for the monumental sonic breakthrough it was: slabs of free jazz mixed with hard-funk rhythms, rock's electric textures and a meditative blues spirit, with the studio used as the editing desk to tie these elements together.