A virtual reincarnation of
Ornette Coleman's first ensembles, the cooperative
Old and New Dreams brought together trumpeter
Don Cherry, tenor saxophonist
Dewey Redman, bassist
Charlie Haden, and drummer
Ed Blackwell to reinterpret the master's early repertoire. By the time their first album was released in 1978, ECM's
Old and New Dreams, all four musicians were leaders with their own projects; this perhaps explains the intermittent nature of their ensuing collaboration (three albums in ten years). The quality of the group's recordings was uniformly high; the two ECM albums benefit from that label's characteristic clarity of sound. With the deaths of
Cherry and Blackwell in the '90s, further collaborations of course became impossible. However, the band's limited yet superb output is an important complement to the work they did under
Coleman's leadership in the late '50s and early '60s. ~ Chris Kelsey