About

A TAV Essential Listening Album.

• Modern Improvisational Jazz Begins Here: Watershed 1960 Opus Anchored By 37-Minute-Plus Title Track.
• Features a Double Quartet: One Band in Each Stereo Channel With Two Simultaneously Playing Rhythm Sections.
• Don Cherry, Scott LaFaro, Eric Dolphy, Charlie Haden, Freddie Hubbard Among Musicians in Two Distinct Groups.
• Mind-Blowing Sonics: Mastered from the Original Master Tapes, ORG Music Creates an Audiophile Spectacular.

Modern improvisational jazz starts here. With one quartet placed in the left stereo channel and another situated in the right, Free Jazz unloads with two simultaneously playing rhythm sections and a 37-minute-plus title cut devised entirely on the spot.

Distinctive from the copycat attempts that followed, this 1960 magnum opus claims melody and harmony, solidifying Ornette Coleman’s reputation as a compositional genius. Of course, the presence of Don Cherry, Scott LaFaro, Billy Higgins in the left channel and Coleman, Freddie Hubbard, Charlie Haden, and Ed Blackwell in the right doesn't hurt.

Mastered from the original master tapes, ORG Music's analog edition has turned this classic into an audiophile spectacular. Due to the presentation of the recording in two distinct stereo channels, this album supremely benefits from the label's mastering efforts and decision to expand the music into wider grooves. Prepare for a mind-blowing experience. – Press Release

“Alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman's masterpiece, Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation by the Ornette Coleman Double Quartet, is one of the hinges of jazz evolution. As a musical hinge, Free Jazz, heard from this side of its development, is a bit of an anticlimax compared with the two-label, five album prelude to this point: Something Else!!!! (Contemporary, 1958), Tomorrow is the Question! (Contemporary, 1959), The Shape of Jazz to Come (Atlantic, 1959), Change of the Century (Atlantic, 1959) and This is Our Music (Atlantic, 1959). Had Coleman done nothing else but release these first five recordings, his legacy as one of the pioneers of free jazz would still be assured. But on Free Jazz Coleman took that final step into the chaos of untethered group improvisation and in doing so took the "free" in free jazz as far as it would go.” – All About Jazz

Musicians:

• Ornette Coleman, alto saxophone
• Don Cherry, pocket trumpet
• Scott LaFaro, bass
• Billy Higgins, drums
• Eric Dolphy, bass clarinet
• Freddie Hubbard, trumpet
• Charlie Haden, bass
• Ed Blackwell, drums

Item description: