Don Cherry

A spirit of creativity coupled with an urge to venture outward placed Don Cherry among jazz's defining figures in the closing decades of the twentieth century. He helped launch Ornette Coleman's revolutionary ensemble in the closing years of the 1950s and kept broadening his expressive range until his passing in 1995. Beyond leading his own ensembles on stage and in the studio, Cherry collaborated with leading jazz artists including Steve Lacy, Sonny Rollins, Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, and Gato Barbieri. His busiest stretch occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when he united with Nana Vasconcelos and Collin Walcott in the world-music ensemble Codona and reunited with former associates Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell plus saxophonist Dewey Redman in the Coleman-inspired unit Old and New Dreams. Later he appeared with Vasconcelos and saxophonist Carlos Ward in the brief-lived project Nu.

Oklahoma City native Don Cherry, born in 1936, first rose to notice alongside Coleman after their musical partnership began near 1957. At that stage Cherry favored the pocket trumpet, also called a cornet—a scaled-down counterpart to the standard instrument. In his grasp the compact horn produced a tighter, somewhat reedier tone than its larger counterpart usually delivers. Although he returned to a conventional cornet periodically across his career, Cherry stayed most strongly linked to the pocket model. He remained with Coleman into the early 1960s, appearing on the saxophonist's first seven—and most pivotal—recordings. In 1960 Cherry joined John Coltrane for the album The Avant-Garde. Following his departure from Coleman's group, Cherry performed with Steve Lacy, Sonny Rollins, Archie Shepp, and Albert Ayler. Between 1963 and 1964 he co-directed the New York Contemporary Five alongside Shepp and John Tchicai. From 1964 to 1966 Cherry and Gato Barbieri fronted a European ensemble, capturing two widely esteemed albums, Complete Communion and Symphony for Improvisers.

Cherry opened the 1970s with a teaching post at Dartmouth College in 1970 and joined the Jazz Composer's Orchestra for a 1973 session. He resided in Sweden for four years, employing that nation as a hub for journeys throughout Europe and the Middle East. During this period Cherry grew steadily drawn to non-Western musical traditions. In the late 1970s and early 1980s he performed and recorded with Codona, the cooperative trio completed by percussionist Nana Vasconcelos and multi-instrumentalist Collin Walcott; the group's aesthetic blended African, Asian, and additional indigenous sources.

At the same time Cherry rejoined ex-Coleman colleagues Charlie Haden, Ed Blackwell, and Dewey Redman to establish Old and New Dreams, an outfit devoted to interpreting their former leader's compositions. Following Codona's breakup, Cherry assembled Nu with Vasconcelos and saxophonist Carlos Ward. In 1988 he issued Art Deco, a comparatively conventional acoustic jazz recording featuring Haden, Billy Higgins, and saxophonist James Clay.

Up to his death in 1995, Cherry persisted in fusing contrasting musical idioms; his fascination with global traditions remained undiminished. He mastered wood flutes, tambura, gamelan, and assorted other non-Western instruments, allowing elements of those practices to surface in later works and performances, notably the 1990 release Multi Kulti, an emblematic tribute to musical variety. Onstage Cherry's results varied widely; he was known to reach engagements well behind schedule, and his execution—never technically polished—occasionally revealed marked, perhaps unwarranted, erosion. In his final period especially, Cherry appeared less consistently commanding as an instrumentalist. Even so, the breadth of his musical influence renders such shortcomings comparatively minor.