The Battle of the Five Spot: Ornette Coleman and the New York Jazz Field
May 1, 2014 | ISBN 978-1-894987-85-1 | 152 Pages
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In 1959, when the California saxophonist Ornette Coleman brought his quartet to New York’s Five Spot Café, the music ignited a storm of controversy, and spurred a struggle between old and new styles of jazz that has never quite subsided. David Neil Lee explores the debate around Coleman’s innovation in terms of its relationships to social change and issues of power within arts communities. With its scholarly approach to jazz history’s hottest topic, The Battle of the Five Spot has won praise from the music’s most knowledgeable readers. Point of Departure’s Bill Shoemaker called it a “crisply written, illuminating analysis of… Read more