What the record is and where it came from
Recorded in 1960 and released by Atlantic in 1961, This Is Our Music features Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell. Blackwell had replaced Billy Higgins on drums. The title identifies a collective, and Coleman’s liner notes describe improvisation as something through which each player helps create the form.
How it sounds, and how it was made
The instruments are alto saxophone, pocket trumpet, double bass and drums. There is no piano or guitar assigned to lay out chords. That does not remove structure; it changes who must articulate it and how.
Instead of listening only for a soloist over accompaniment, follow the choices around the lead line. Coleman’s stated ambition was to bring aspects of earlier jazz ensemble playing together with newer melodic and harmonic approaches.
What lands
“Embraceable You” is the revealing test. A familiar Gershwin song gives the listener an existing reference against which to hear the quartet’s decisions. It also challenges the assumption that musical freedom requires abandoning all inherited material.
“Beauty Is a Rare Thing” provides a complementary invitation: approach the music through the feeling and interaction of the performance, before demanding that it behave like a conventional arrangement.
What does not
The loosened relationship between melody and accompaniment can make it difficult to locate yourself. If you are listening for regular confirmation that the players have reached the expected place, uncertainty can become the dominant experience. The record asks you to treat that uncertainty as something to hear through.
The ideas inside it
Freedom here carries obligations. Each musician must contribute without making the others irrelevant. The group identity is produced by listening and responding, not merely by granting everyone permission to play at once.
Who should hear it, and who should not
Hear it if you want an approachable question to take into freer jazz: what are the other players doing to the meaning of this melody? A fixed chordal backing is not part of the offer.
Is it worth your time
Yes. “Embraceable You” is a useful entry because it gives discovery a point of comparison. Then hear the original compositions as the quartet’s own terms of conversation.
