PBS, NPR and local perspective for western Mass.

Jazz Beat #1 - Ornette Coleman

New England Public Media | By Tom Reney

Published July 21, 2015 at 2:25 PM EDT

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email

Your browser doesn’t support HTML5 audio

Ornette Coleman

I didn’t see Ornette Coleman until 1971 when he played the Saturday afternoon program of the Newport Jazz Festival with his old comrades Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden, and Ed Blackwell. It was fortuitous that he shared the afternoon bill with Eubie Blake, Willie “The Lion” Smith, Freddie Hubbard, Charles Mingus, and the New York Bass Violin Choir, for that evening a riot interrupted Dionne Warwick’s performance of “What the World Needs Now” and the festival came to a crashing halt.

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email

Tom Reney

Tom was honored by the Jazz Journalists Association with the Willis Conover-Marian McPartland Award for Career Excellence in Broadcasting in 2019. In addition to hosting Jazz à la Mode since 1984, Tom writes the jazz blog and produces the Jazz Beat podcast at NEPM. He began working in jazz radio in 1977 at WCUW, a community-licensed radio station in Worcester, Massachusetts. Tom holds a bachelor's degree from UMass Amherst, where he majored in English and African American Studies.

Email Tom at tom_reney@nepm.org.

See stories by Tom Reney