This Is Our Music (45rpm-edition) - Plak

ENGLISH

The inventor of what has been called “free jazz”, Ornette Coleman belongs to that rare breed of artists/thinkers whose influence extends far beyond the realm of their chosen medium. Always putting his remarkable virtuosity at the service of melody and emotion, he has had a powerful impact on how musicians play, improvise, and compose, on how music lovers listen, on the color and sound of music the world over.<br /><br /> It was while working as an elevator operator in the late-50s in Los Angeles, CA, that he formed the Ornette Coleman Quintet, a core of players who would figure largely in his life: a lanky teenage trumpeter, Don Cherry, and a cherubic double bass player with a pensive style, Charlie Haden, who in Ornette found a dream accomplice. Drummers Billy Higgins and Ed Blackwell also joined the intense exploratory fold as integral pieces.<br /><br /> Coleman fondly recalls his early collaborators: »I would write new music all the time, usually for every show we had, and they would play like they had been playing it their whole lives. As a group and as human beings, we found a relationship to our common humanity and to the creation of art that was really special, truly something else.«<br /><br /> "This Is Our Music" was issued on Atlantic Records in 1960, Coleman's third release for the label and fifth release overall. The seminal 7-song set is his first with drummer Ed Blackwell in place of Billy Higgins and is also significant in that it's Coleman's lone Atlantic release to feature a non-original, the Gershwin standard "Embraceable You". The remainder of the program is comprised of creative Coleman compositions which give the piano-less quartet room to showcase their immense improvisational talents, highlighted by numbers like "Blues Connotation", "Beauty Is a Rare Thing" and "Kaleidoscope".<br /><br /> This essential edition by ORG Music was mastered from the original analog tapes at 45rpm by Bernie Grundman, pressed on two 180 gram audiophile-grade LPs at Pallas in Germany, and is housed in an old school style Stoughton case-wrapped gatefold jacket.