#double quartet

Faccia gialluta, fa o miracolo

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Featuring drummers Billy Higgins, Ed Blackwell, bassists Charlie Haden, Scott LaFaro, trumpeters Don Cherry, Freddie Hubbard, the multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy, as well as the Alto Saxophonist Ornette Coleman himself. Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation by the Ornette Coleman Double Quartet (1961) is considered one of the hinges of jazz evolution. Even without the release of this album Coleman would have still guaranteed his legacy as one of the pioneers of free jazz with his five album prelude: Something Else!!!! (1958), Tomorrow is the Question! (1959), The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959), Change of the Century (1959), This is Our Music (1959). However, with the release of his final album, he took a step into the chaos and created a new type of improvisation by taking the “free” in free jazz to it’s farthest point. 

So what exactly is Avant-Garde Jazz also know as free or experimental jazz. Free jazz is a type of jazz that was developed in the 1950s and 1960s because many musicians were dissatisfied with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz of the 40s and 50s. This allowed musicians to break down conventional jazz by being discarding fixed chord changes and tempos. In the case of Ornette Coleman, free jazz was the rejection of written chord canges believing that melodic lines should be the basis for his basic harmonic progressions. 

Certain characters begin to reveal themselves as the piece starts. Amidst these characteristics is Coleman and his blues, Cherry and Hubbard’s hard bop. The band as a whole seems to migrate themselves in some sort of evolution with the elements of swing and a call-and-response phrasing while also the seemingly natural riffing emerging between the horns. As the 37 minute piece evolves, the musical environment starts to improve. Containing exciting drum and bass interplay as the horn section makes their own statements. 

Listening to the 17 minute “First Take’ would only show the dryness of Free Jazz making it evident how the combination of the first and second take really solidifies the ideas of Free Jazz. 

Louis Spohr (1784-1859).

The summit of Spohr’s career was his appointment as Hofkapellmeister at Kassel in 1822, a post he held until his retirement in 1857, during which time he wrote arguably his greatest music. The first twelve years at Kassel were particularly rich in fine works including the first three double quartets.