Old and New Dreams

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, Rovi