Ornette Coleman

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Ornette Coleman is a luminary. The elder statesman of jazz has stirred up the world for more than 50 years with his remarkable ingenuity and heartfelt music making. As a saxophonist and composer, Coleman has served as the foremost visionary of his genre, influencing generations of jazz innovators with his dazzling, cataclysmic and otherworldly forays into free-form jazz. Still creating vigorous and groundbreaking work, the 77-year-old Coleman was honoured in 2007 with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and the Pulitzer Prize for music for his first new album in a decade, the acclaimed Grammy nominated Sound Grammar.

Coleman plays the alto saxophone with an immediately recognisable instinctual melodic style. As a composer of boundless creativity his shows are esteemed for the spontaneity of their group improvisations and idiosyncratic beauty. Currently playing with his son Denardo on drums and three bass players, he continues to reinvent his sound. The band provides the perfect milieu for Coleman's piercing and resonant sax.

The creator of what has been called "free jazz", Coleman belongs to that rare breed of musician whose influence extends far beyond the realm of their immediate discipline. He has led and composed for a variety of ensembles, from duos to symphony orchestras, both electric and acoustic. Always privileging melody and emotion, he continues to have a powerful impact on how musicians play, improvise and compose.

This is a rare opportunity to see living jazz history.

Photo credit - Dennis Katz

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