WKCR is excited to announce our annual birthday broadcast of the legendary Ornette Coleman. Born March 9th, 1930 in Fort Worth, Texas, Ornette Coleman had a searing, unrepentantly human sound and endless melodicism that fully embodied Bird's vocal angularity, the sprawling, rough-and-tumble expressiveness of the Southwest saxophone lineage, and the blues. Alongside numerous distinguished peers throughout his nearly 60+ year career––Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, Dewey Redman, Ed Blackwell, Billy Higgins, Pat Metheny, Bern Nix, and Denardo Coleman among others––Ornette continuously reshaped traditional forms and musical languages into fields of sound that can be simultaneously unrecognizable and steadfastly, beautifully grounded in both past and future