Town Hall, 1962
ORNETTE COLEMAN
(ESP-Disk)

Making like a jazz version of a DIY punk, legendary avant-garde saxophonist Ornette Coleman produced and recorded his own concert at New York's Town Hall in '62, where he unveiled his new trio (with bassist David Izenson and drummer Charles Moffett), augmented by a string quartet. Ornette's keening alto tone and skittering lines are the focal point, but his band's interplay with the strings is genuinely impressive, especially on the 24-minute "The Ark." One track, "Dedication to Poets and Writers," showcases the string ensemble only and proves Coleman to be a budding "new music" composer. Town Hall has just been reissued with a crisp new master. espdisk.com.

This article appears in Apr 30 – May 6, 2008.

Eric Snider is the dean of Bay area music critics. He started in the early 1980s as one of the founding members of Music magazine, a free bi-monthly. He was the pop music critic for the then-St. Petersburg...