The Summer House Sessions

Having pioneered free jazz as a member of Ornette Coleman_„Žs classic quartet, and with a high profile collaboration with John Coltrane under his belt, the globetrotting jazz trumpeter settled in Sweden with his partner Moki and her daughter Neneh. There, he assembled a group of Swedish musicians and led a series of weekly workshops at the ABF, or Workers_„Ž Educational Association, from February to April of 1968, with lessons on extended forms of improvisation including breathing, drones, Turkish rhythms, overtones, silence, natural voices, and Indian scales. That summer, saxophonist and recording engineer GÍ_ran Freese_„îwho later recorded Don_„Žs classic Organic Music Society and Eternal Now LPs_„îinvited Don, members of his two working bands, and a Turkish drummer to his summer house in KummelnÍ_s, just outside of Stockholm, for a series of rehearsals and jam sessions that put the prior months_„Ž workshops into practice. Long relegated to the status of a mysterious footnote in Don_„Žs sessionography, tapes from this session, as well as one professionally mixed tape intended for release, were recently found in the vaults of the Swedish Jazz Archive, and the lost Summer House Sessions are finally available over fifty years after they were recorded.