Colors

Ornette Coleman and Joachim Kuhn - Colors

Recorded during the 20th Anniversary Leipziger JazzTage on August 31, 1996 at the Leipzig Opera.

Ornette Coleman - alto saxophone, trumpet, violin
Joachim Kuhn - piano

For Ornette Coleman, Colors is yet another step into new territory by an artist whose four decades in the public eye and ear have been marked by an astonishing capacity for growth and change, and by an insatiable desire to cross all national, cultural and stylistic borders - and to bring together musicians and musics from widely disparate backgrounds.
For Ornette's collaborator on this collection, the brilliant pianist Joachim Kuhn, Colors is the realization of a lifelong dream. Like so many musicians who grew up in the latter part of this waning century, Kuhn's world was forever changed when he was exposed to the revelatory sound that came to be known as Free Jazz, and particularly the work of Ornette Coleman. Born in Leipzig, Germany in 1944, the classically trained Kuhn became enraptured with the thrill of improvisation at a very early age, forming his first jazz group when he was 12, and deciding to devote himself wholly to jazz shortly thereafter. By the age of 14, he was performing frequently with his older brother, clarinetist Rolf Kuhn. Joachim had already been deeply affected by the work of Miles Davis and John Coltrane, when he first heard about the music of Ornette Coleman. As he recalls it, "I heard some people mention his name, and they said 'This guy plays without chord changes.' And I said, 'Wow, this is someone I have to hear!" Kuhn says that his first contact with Ornette's music, on such albums as The Shape of Jazz To Come and This Is Our Music, "changed everything for me... it was those records that encouraged me to play free music."
...
The collaboration between these kindred spirits came about by happy accident, as Kuhn remembers: "My agent, Genevieve Peyregne, happened to meet Ornette, and played him some of my records." It wasn't long thereafter that Ornette - who has worked with only a handful of pianists in his career - contacted Joachim, inviting him to perform in a duo setting at a concert in the historic arena in Verona, Italy in the summer of 1996. Kuhn accepted instantly, and returned the compliment by inviting Ornette to join him in a performance in the pianist's hometown of Leipzig that same summer. It is the latter performance that is captured on Colors.
Joachim reports that the personal and musical rapport between the two musicians was immediately evident, and that the cultural chasm that would seem to separate them was nowhere to be seen: "Even though he came from the other side of the world - musically and geographically - we found out quite quickly that it was not difficult to play together... He had written 12 new tunes especially for these performances, and by the time we played in Leipzig, we were very comfortable with the music and with each other, and it sounds really spontaneous." (from the liner notes by Gary Lambert)

Tracklisting:

1. Faxing {5:43}

2. House of Stained Glass {7:07}

3. Refills {9:02}

4. Story Writing {10:21}

5. Three Ways to One {8:54}

6. Passion Cultures {8:41}

7. Night Plans {10:01}

8. Cyber Cyber {5:46}

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