About

“This is Ornette's second Contemporary album, recorded a year after his debut Something Else!!!!, again featuring Don Cherry but substituting the "house" rhythm section of Shelly Manne and Red Mitchell for Billy Higgins and Don Payne.

Albums followed on Atlantic, Blue Note, ESP, and Horizon. Ornette's "accessibility" remains a record company concern–a 1988 Portrait release was touted by the label as his "most accessible." But his music was accessible enough 40 years ago for Contemporary's Les Koenig to have launched Coleman's enduring and distinguished recording career.” – Original Jazz Classics

“The ensemble writing on Tomorrow is the Question! comes off more precise and filigreed than on Something Else!!!! and considerably more musical. Heard by today's ears, it is not so jarring a progression. Novel at the time was Coleman and trumpeter Don Cherry's tearing loose from harmonic convention in their solos, like Coleman's refractive muse on the title piece (sounding like a Jungian analysis of traditional New Orleans jazz) and, "Mind and Time" (an angular Thelonious Monk-like piece taken to the next level). Coleman shares his space with Cherry, who tends to stay melodically closer to home, providing a tether to Coleman's dissonant flights of fancy and imagination.

Coleman and Cherry reveal that they are not going back to the old ways, but that they are carefully considering where they are going and how they are changing jazz music. Much here sounds like standard bebop/hard bop of the period, but there is an undercurrent of creative anxiety, a nervous tension that continues to build progressively and would be heard more clearly in Coleman's later recordings.” - All About Jazz

Musicians:

• Composer & Alto Saxophone - Ornette Coleman
• Bass – Percy Heath, Red Mitchell
• Drums – Shelly Manne
• Trumpet – Don Cherry

Item description: