MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O’CONNOR and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Savage House, Enzo, Madfabulous, and Erupcja
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The shaper of jazz to come
CHRIS SEARLE recommends a book on Ornette Coleman, one of the great musical innovators of the 20th century
'AS MANY UNISONS AS STARS IN THE SKY’: Ornette Coleman
[Pic JP Roche/Creative Commons]
CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
Ornette Coleman: The Territory and the Adventure
by Maria Golia,
(Reaktion Books, £16)
“HOW do you try to turn emotion into knowledge? That’s what I try to do with my horn.” Thus was the testimony of the revolutionary alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman.
He was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1930, and the titles of his early albums reveal his intentions and musical trajectory: Change of the Century, The Shape of Jazz to Come, Tomorrow Is the Question, Free Jazz.
These were epochal recordings with fellow musical subversives such as trumpeter Don Cherry, bassist Charlie Haden, drummers Billy Higgins and Ed Blackwell.
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