Denardo Coleman "The Shape of Jazz to Come" - A Tribute to Ornette Coleman

Hardly anyone knew Ornette Coleman as well as his son Denardo. At the age of ten, the drummer played publicly for the first time in his famous father's band. "He turned everything upside down," the son says of Ornette, who died in 2015. Considered a rebel, the saxophonist is credited with the "free jazz" subgenre. With "The Shape of Jazz to Come" in 1959, he dispensed with conventional harmony changes and gave soloists completely new freedoms, "changing the course of jazz."

To honor Ornette's tireless creativity, Denardo Coleman performs this album classic in a new arrangement for orchestra and improvisers. Six composers from across the musical spectrum - David Sanford, Nicole Mitchell, Carman Moore, Craig Harris, Nick Dunston, and Pamela Z - were commissioned to create new versions of the six compositions featured on The Shape of Jazz to Come. These new arrangements honor the original album while demonstrating its everlasting influence by taking each composition in new directions.

The only 25-year-old Isaiah Collier from Chicago is a saxophonist of overwhelming power; the taz* experienced an evening in 2022 "as if Collier and his band were retelling the entire Big Bang in one concert hour." Similarly committed to fighting entrenched patterns is rap/spoken word activist Moor Mother, winner of the German Jazz Prize in 2023, who has given other concerts at the festival as artist in residence. On bass is Jamaladeen Tacuma, who has performed on stage with Ornette Coleman. Also performing: Nduduzo Makhathini on piano, Mary Halvorson on guitar and Lee Odom on alto saxophone.