Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman
Randolph Denard Ornette Colemanwas an American jazz saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter, and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s, a term he invented with the name of an album. Coleman's timbre was easily recognized: his keening, crying sound drew heavily on blues music. He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1994. His album Sound Grammar received the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for music...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSaxophonist
Date of Birth9 March 1930
CityFort Worth, TX
CountryUnited States of America
I would like to play for audiences who are not using my music to stimulate their sex organs.
When I have them working together, it's like a beautiful kaleidoscope.
You've got to realize. In the western world, regardless of what color you are, what title the music is, it's all played by the same notes.
It seems to me that in the western world, culture has something to do with appearance. A person that's out creating good stuff has got to appreciate someone when they take the time to have an appearance that goes with what they're doing.
If you decide you want to be treated good, and you treat someone else good, or you want to learn something, it's information. It's getting the right, good information.
I've never had a relationship with a record executive. I always went to the record company by someone that liked my playing. Then they would get fired, and I'd be left with the record company. And then - because they got fired - the record company wouldn't do anything for me.
I mean, if you decided to go out today and get you an instrument and do whatever it is that you do, no one can tell you how you're going to do it but when you do it.
I don't know what they're thinking about. Just because someone says, 'I like what you do' or something: They might like it today and tomorrow they might not. I've had that experience with record companies.
Harmelody allows everybody to be an individual who does not have to imitate anybody else.
No one has to learn to spell to talk, right? You see a little kid holding a conversation with an adult. He probably doesn't know the words he's saying, but he knows where to fit them to make what he's thinking logical to what you're saying.
That's why I haven't been so anxious. But now, lots of people write and say, 'I want to find out what you're doing.' So I know that this book will enlighten them.
Originally, I wanted to be a composer. I always tell people, 'I think of myself as a composer.
Making music is like a form of religion for me, because it soothes your heart and increases the pleasure of your brain. Most of all, it's very enjoyable to express something that you can only hear and not see, which is not bad.
Only America makes you feel that everybody wants to be like you. That's what success is: Everybody wants to be like you.