Live in Stockholm

Don Cherry will forever be associated with those classic early Ornette Coleman albums. But after that era and up until his 1995 death, he traveled what he called a “Multi-Kulti” landscape that blended avant-garde jazz with many non-Western styles of music. Recorded live at the AFB House in 1968 with a sextet, the first cut here is the most jazz-like, with the band even running through an approximation of Coleman’s “Congeniality” at one point. The second piece (from the same gig) offers a broader vision, with a section of flutes sounding like chattering birds, chanting from band members, and some Turkish melodies. Taken from a series of quintet performances in a geodesic dome—set in the courtyard of the Swedish Museum of Art in 1971—the final piece is driven by African and Turkish rhythms, with Indian drones and the sound of playing children in the background. A release this rough-hewn would be laughable to many jazz fans today, but the utopian ideals and wide-open approach here capture the sound and feel of the time for Cherry and many others.