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Steve Coleman

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Steve Coleman is an American saxophonist, composer, bandleader and music theorist. He was born in 1956 and grew up on the South Side of Chicago. He began playing the alto saxophone at fourteen and later studied in Illinois and at Roosevelt University. In 1978 he moved to New York, where he played in the big bands of Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, Slide Hampton and Sam Rivers, and as a sideman with, among others, David Murray, Dave Holland, Michael Brecker and Abbey Lincoln.

Music and breakthrough

In his first years in New York he played on the street and in small clubs with a group he put together with the trumpeter Graham Haynes. Out of that grew Steve Coleman and Five Elements, his most important ensemble. In it he developed improvisation within nested, repeating structures. Together with young Black musicians such as Cassandra Wilson and Greg Osby he founded the M-Base movement. Albums from that period include Back to the Beautiful, Phase Space, Rhythm in Mind and Flashback on M-Base.

Influence

Coleman sees his music as part of the African diaspora and searched for those roots. In 1993 he travelled to Ghana and became interested in the polyrhythms of the Dagomba. In 1996 he worked for twelve days with the Cuban group Afrocuba de Matanzas and recorded The Sign and the Seal. In 1997 he travelled to Senegal and in 1998 to southern India. In 2014 he received a MacArthur Fellowship. His influence on jazz can be heard above all in the way young musicians approach rhythm and structure.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to a track from Rhythm in Mind or Phase Space. Notice how the rhythm keeps shifting and how the melodies pass through the band in short, repeated figures.

Discography

Studio albums

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

Categories: Artists