Named for one of Ornette Coleman’s most evocative compositions, the all-star project Broken Shadows honors the Coleman legacy along with the music of Coleman’s fellow Fort Worth native reed players Dewey Redman and Julius Hemphill, featuring the wildly inventive saxophonists Tim Berne and Chris Speed, and the Bad Plus rhythm section of bassist Reid Anderson and drummer Dave King.
Debuting as a band in January 2017 for the Konceptions Music Series at Brooklyn’s Korzo, the band is a remarkably balanced vehicle for performing Coleman’s work, approaching it with fearless experimentation, deep grooves, and wicked humor. Emerging as a major talent from New York’s experimental Downtown scene of the late 1970s, Berne was a student of Hemphill and has led nearly 40 albums and collaborated with a coterie of exploratory musicians including Bill Frisell, Paul Motian, and Nels Cline, among many others. Speed is a three-time DownBeat Poll winner for his work on clarinet, and is a founding member of the Claudia Quintet. Anderson and King have recorded a dozen albums as members of the wildly successful Bad Plus, and each have extensive careers as bandleaders and sidemen.
