Fire Music – Watch the trailer for new documentary about the Free Jazz Movement

The American saxophonist Ornette COLEMAN performing with his Quartet composed by the Americans Dewey REDMAN (sax), Charlie HADEN (b) and Ed BLACKWELL (dm).

Although the free jazz movement of the 1960s and ‘70s was much maligned in some jazz circles, its pioneers – brilliant talents like Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, and John Coltrane – are today acknowledged as central to the evolution of jazz as America’s most innovative art form. FIRE MUSIC showcases the architects of a movement whose radical brand of improvisation pushed harmonic and rhythmic boundaries and produced landmark albums like Coleman’s Free Jazz: A Collective Inspiration and Coltrane’s Ascension. A rich trove of archival footage conjures the 1960s jazz scene along with incisive reflections by critic Gary Giddins and a number of the movement’s key players.

Directed by Tom Surgal, the documentary hits US cinemas on 10th September 2021.