The Shape of Jazz to Come

Calling The Shape of Jazz to Come an album without harmony turns a change in musical relationships into a slogan. There is no piano, but that does not mean that notes cease to relate to one another. Ornette Coleman’s alto, Don Cherry’s cornet, Charlie Haden’s bass and Billy Higgins’s drums make six distinct pieces. The useful question is what those four instruments can do together.

Recorded in Los Angeles on May 22, 1959, this was Coleman’s Atlantic debut. Lonely Woman provides the famous entrance, but Peace, third in the sequence, is the longest performance at roughly nine minutes. Reputation and duration do not assign the same weight to each track. The album becomes more tangible when its provocative title is accompanied by attention to the six actual pieces and their proportions.

More than one sense of speed

In his Library of Congress essay, Stephen Rush describes the contrast between Lonely Woman’s plaintive melody and its fast-moving drum feel. That observation supplies a useful starting point: the character of one layer need not describe every other layer. A melody can suggest lingering while the rhythm remains active. Calling the whole performance slow or fast captures only part of that relationship.

A long piece before the midpoint turns

Eventually leads into Peace; Focus on Sanity then opens the remaining group of three, followed by Congeniality and Chronology. The greatest individual span is not reserved for a concluding statement. The six performances distribute their weight differently, even with the same quartet throughout. Their order matters as well as the best-known theme, giving each piece a position within a larger shape.

Absence is not disorder

Without piano, the horns can still establish melodic directions, the bass can shape movement through its register, and the drums can articulate time. No single instrument needs to supply a complete answer in advance. The quartet invites attention to the relationships those roles create. Its future-facing title becomes a practical question about playing together, rather than a demand that listeners accept a historical slogan before hearing a tune.