Charlie Haden & The Liberation Music Orchestra

The Liberation Music Orchestra endures as a defining achievement in the work of bassist Charlie Haden, ranking among the most significant ensembles to arise during the avant-garde jazz years of the 1960s. Haden launched the project with pianist Carla Bley in 1969 to confront social and political inequities while creating opportunities for large-ensemble free and exploratory jazz; the group stayed integral to his output until his death in 2014.

Its landmark 1970 album, Liberation Music Orchestra, presented original material alongside carefully chosen covers arranged by Bley that addressed topics from the Vietnam War to the civil rights movement. The recording also revealed the ensemble’s broad stylistic range, drawing on jazz, folk, and world-music sources. Trumpeter Don Cherry, saxophonist Gato Barbieri, drummer Andrew Cyrille, trombonist Roswell Rudd, trumpeter Michael Mantler, and other jazz figures supplied the personnel that shaped this sound.

Across the ensuing five decades Haden and Bley periodically reassembled the LMO with shifting personnel, producing further albums such as 1982’s The Ballad of the Fallen, 1990’s Dream Keeper, and 2005’s Not in Our Name. In these recordings and accompanying performances Haden consistently demonstrated both his far-reaching musical imagination and his enduring support for progressive political movements, environmentalism, and worldwide social justice.

After contracting polio at age 15, Haden’s condition deteriorated in later life when he received a post-polio syndrome diagnosis that left him frail and sharply curtailed his performing. He died in Los Angeles in July 2014 at age 76.

Impulse! issued his final recording with the Liberation Music Orchestra, Time/Life (Song for the Whales and Other Beings), in 2016. Produced by Ruth Cameron Haden and Carla Bley, the album combined a live performance the group gave in Belgium in 2011 with three new studio tracks completed after his death featuring bassist Steve Swallow, one of Haden’s longtime collaborators.