The Complete Science Fiction Sessions

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