What are your listening experiences about jazz?

Personally, I think that without Ornette Coleman, there might not have been John Coltrane's later style.

1959 was an important year in the history of jazz. Miles Davis led a group of great masters to record the best-selling jazz album "Kind of Blue" in history, bringing Modal Jazz to the world. John Coltrane recorded "Giant Steps" with extremely complex harmonic changes. In the same year, "The Shape of Jazz to Come" by Ornette Coleman, our protagonist today, was also released. Jazz would never be the same again.

At that time, Ornette received a lot of criticism, and the great Miles Davis said that he was "all screwed up inside." Prior to this, jazz, although there was improvisation, still followed a certain song structure and harmony when playing. During a solo, the drums, bass, and piano are still accompanied by the original harmony of the song, and the trumpet or saxophone improvises within the harmonic framework. Moreover, each musician takes turns to improvise, and rarely improvise at the same time.

The free jazz brought by Ornette Coleman has no concept of song at all, no traditional song structure (AABA or ABAB), and no fixed harmony progression. All the musicians improvise at the same time according to a big motive concept, sometimes cooperating with each other, sometimes going against each other. And there's a lot of atonality.

For example, "Eventually" from "The Shape of Jazz to Come". This song sounds very interesting. It gives me the feeling that the saxophone and the trumpet are like two people. They are saying something to each other at first, and then they each start to express their own opinions, and then it becomes more and more intense, like a quarrel. The musicians used a lot of atonality, and in many places it sounded exactly like the intonation of people talking. Very interesting.

After that, Ornette Coleman released the "Free Jazz" album in 1960. The almost 40-minute improvisational performance pushed this style to the extreme. If you are interested, you can listen to it.

Innovation is divided into two categories, one is evolution and the other is revolution. And when innovation occurs, it will have a strong impact and challenge on people's habits. Faced with such novelty, some people reject it and sneer at it. Some people are open to all kinds of rivers, and they will follow the good ones and change the bad ones.