Ornette Coleman – Tomorrow Is The Question!

Contemporary Records Acoustic Sounds Series continues in 2023!

Seven key albums from the Contemporary Records catalog reissued on 180-gram vinyl

Titles featuring Andre Previn, Leroy Vinnegar, Ornette Coleman, Curtis Counce, Art Farmer and Phineas Newborn Jr.

Featuring all-analog mastering by Bernie Grundman

Pressed at Quality Record Pressings

Stoughton Printing old-style tip-on jackets

Continuing Craft Recordings’ 70th Anniversary celebration of Contemporary Records

Craft Recordings and Acoustic Sounds are proud to continue the Contemporary Records Acoustic Sounds series for 2023 with seven album releases from the Contemporary Records catalog, celebrating 70 years of the legendary jazz label. The releases are supervised by Chad Kassem, CEO of Acoustic Sounds, the world’s largest source for audiophile recordings.

Each title, originally engineered by Roy DuNann and/or Howard Holzer, features all-analog mastering from the original tapes by legendary engineer Bernie Grundman (himself a former employee of the label), as well as unsurpassed audiophile pressing on 180-gram vinyl at Quality Record Pressings, presented in a Stoughton Printing old-style tip-on jacket.

The series highlights gems from Contemporary’s extraordinary catalog and features artists who both defined and expanded the sound of West Coast jazz.

Released in 1959, Tomorrow Is The Question!, the second album by jazz musician Ornette Coleman, was his last for Contemporary Records before he began a highly successful multi-album series for Atlantic Records.

“Shaking out of the contractual obligation forcing him to employ a pianist on his debut, Something Else!!!! (Contemporary, 1958), alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman dispensed with the instrument altogether on 1959’s Tomorrow is the Question!, causing a bit of consternation on the part of the mainstream jazz media. This was Coleman’s committed step forward toward a harmonically less restrictive sound, en route to the joyful chaos of Free Jazz (Atlantic, 1961). Following, in form, Gerry Mulligan’s famous piano-less quartet of the early 1950s, Coleman greatly liberated his solo and rhythm instruments, taking a quantum greater advantage of this freedom compared with Mulligan, had the baritone saxophonist been so inclined.” — All About Jazz

Founded in 1951 by film producer, screenwriter and record collector Lester Koenig (1917-1977), Contemporary Records became the epicenter of the West Coast jazz scene, while its cutting-edge approach to sound and design attracted some of the era’s most exciting artists. The Contemporary Records Acoustic Sounds series — which launched in the spring of 2022 with titles by Art Pepper, Barney Kessel and Benny Carter, among others — honors the label’s rich legacy through meticulous reissues that highlight the label’s influential classics, as well as its must-hear rarities.

Since its initial rollout, the series has earned accolades from a slew of outlets, including JazzTimes, which spoke to the impact of the label, reflecting: “Artists, producers, and engineers alike have held Contemporary aloft…as a label dedicated to presenting jazz at its absolute purest, richest, and live-est,” adding that the new reissues “are living, breathing proof of that label’s hotly cutting clarity.” Audiophile Review, meanwhile, marveled at the stereo pressing of Art Pepper + Eleven: Modern Jazz Classics, which it called “top-notch,” elaborating that it sounds “richer and more inviting…deliver[ing] a bit more cinemascopic ‘view’ of the group.” Praising Hampton Hawes’ Four! as “pristine,” Audiophile Audition added, “Kudos to Craft Recordings for re-introducing a brilliant pianist.”

Musicians:
Ornette Coleman, alto saxophone
Don Cherry, trumpet
Percy Heath, bass (1-6)
Red Mitchell, bass (7-9)
Shelly Mann, drums

Format : Vinyl Record

1 Lp