RITA DI SANTO draws attention to a new film that features Ken Loach and Jeremy Corbyn, and their personal experience of media misrepresentation
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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]
JULIA TOPPIN recommends Patti Smith’s eloquent memoir that wrestles with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime
MARJORIE MAYO welcomes an account of family life after Oscar Wilde, a cathartic exercise, written by his grandson
KEN COCKBURN guides us through a survey of Chekov’s early short fiction, and the groundwork it laid for his later masterpieces
ANDY HEDGECOCK revels in a hugely enjoyable but deadly serious examination of the 1930s, that is an indictment of our own era
The bard distills our hellish times into fiery words
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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