Ornette Coleman - Complete Science Fiction Sessions
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CD Details
Artist: Ornette ColemanEdition: Music CD
Format: Extra tracks, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2000-05-02
Music Label: Sony
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
- What Reason Could I Give?
- Civilization Day
- Street Woman
- Science Fiction
- Rock the Clock
- All My Life
- Law Years
- The Jungle Is a Skyscraper
- School Work
- Country Town Blues
- Street Woman [Alternate Take][#][*]
- Civilization Day [alternate mix][Alternate Take][#][*]
- Happy House
- Elizabeth
- Written Word [#][*]
- Broken Shadows
- Rubber Gloves
- Good Girl Blues
- Is It Forever?
Music reviews of Complete Science Fiction Sessions
Music Review: long-awaited Ornette masterpiece as deluxe CD
Rating: 5 Stars
At last! SCIENCE FICTION on CD -- 24-bit mapped, and given the full Mosaic-style treatment by Michael Cuscuna. Included are 2 alternate takes and 1 never before released track from the original 1971 sessions, along with all the material from those sessions originally released in 1982 as BROKEN SHADOWS.
SCIENCE FICTION is the first Ornette record I heard, in 1975, and I still love it. Most of it sounds quite like the great Atlantic recordings of 1959-62, with Charlie Haden on bass, either Ed Blackwell or Billy Higgins on drums, and Don Cherry or Bobby Bradford on trumpet (and all 5 on some tracks). Dewey Redman, in Ornette's working band of the time, also plays on many of the tracks. The twist is that there are several vocal tracks -- the 2 with Asha Puthli, the female pop/classical singer from Bombay, are heartbreakingly beautiful. (Some critics did not approve, but they weren't listening!) The title track features the poet David Henderson, and it truly sounds like Science Fiction. Two more vocal tracks, from BROKEN SHADOWS, are more conventional, and frankly can be safely skipped. A highlight of the set is "Law Years," one of Ornette's best known and often covered compositions (by Old and New Dreams and Ken Vandermark, among others). The variety of styles and textures made the original SCIENCE FICTION, to me, Ornette's greatest accomplishment as a cohesive album. (Be aware that many critics disagreed.) There is a wrenching intensity to every track on the original album, the first 8 of the 19 collected here, making a statement greater than the sum of the individual pieces, a testimony to Ornette's compositional vision. It is interesting to find that "School Work" is the theme used in DANCING IN YOUR HEAD, Ornette's first electric Prime Time recording from 1976. That was to be Ornette's new direction following this work, so SCIENCE FICTION stands as the last great recording before Ornette's "Second Period."
Absolutely essential!
Description of Complete Science Fiction Sessions
All products are BRAND NEW and factory sealed. Fast shipping and 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed.This two-CD set combines a pair of Ornette Coleman's Columbia LPs, Science Fiction and Broken Shadows, and adds three tracks--a new piece, an alternate take, and an alternate mix. Most of the material comes from sessions in September 1971, when Coleman surrounded himself with old associates--including the group with which he'd made his startling New York debut a dozen years earlier: trumpeter Don Cherry, bassist Charlie Haden, and drummer Billy Higgins. Also along were tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman, drummer Ed Blackwell, and trumpeter Bobby Bradford, another longtime associate. The seven musicians recorded as two distinct quartets, as a quintet with Bradford, and as a septet, while other guests contributed to still more permutations. All the musicians were deeply immersed in Coleman's musical language: the complex, sometimes jagged tunes; the emotional directness that drew on the wellspring of the blues; the sprung rhythms and melodic freedom that had first defined the free-jazz movement.
The set's first CD consists largely of quartet and quintet pieces. There are new groupings that take new directions, such as two evocative songs with the gifted Indian vocalist Asha Puthi, accompanied by a septet with two classical trumpeters and Higgins on tympani. And on "Science Fiction," the band breathes seething chaos around the poet David Henderson's voice. Much of the second CD concentrates on the septet, a group that inevitably invokes Coleman's most radical grouping, the "double quartet" that recorded Free Jazz in 1960, with five of the original members present. The pieces here are shorter, with more clearly defined compositional materials, but the collective improvisations are still bracing and the rhythmic dialogues often stunning. While Cherry and Coleman no longer worked together regularly, they shared a vision and empathy unique in jazz, and the shifting densities and internal meters of "Elizabeth" are something to behold. "Good Girl Blues" and "Is It Forever" catch Coleman layering and alternating different components--Kansas City blues, swing, bop, free, and classical--to create unique musical spaces. This is one of Coleman's strangest groupings, with his regular band joined by blues singer Webster Armstrong, guitarist Jim Hall, hard-bop pianist Cedar Walton, and a woodwind quintet. This is essential hearing, varied and intriguing music from one of the greatest architects, composers, and improvisers in the history of jazz. Stuart Broomer
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