Who Is David Ornette Cherry?
David Ornette Cherry grew up in Watts, California. This Watts young man later won the 2003 ASCAP- Chamber Music America Award for adventurous Programming of Contempory Music. He writes, arranges, and improvises music from sunrise to sunset.
The pulses and melodies that arise from his jazz, classical, African, world music background, and from playing with some of the great jazz artists of our times, speak about our human experiences through the the language of sound. He listens with an open heart and fresh mind to his collaborators and the world around him in a way that makes his compositions not only music, but a way of life a positive form of energy, and a way to connect. Current work is titled Ensemble for Improvisors. He trains young musicians in world music, theory, and piano.
David was born the same year Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry recorded their first album, SOMETHIN ELSE. The ambient music streaming through his childhood was generated by the early collaborations of his dad, Don Cherry, with Coleman and the musicians who visited his parents’ Mariposa Avenue home in Los Angeles.
However, it was a wood-chopping accident one summer in Sweden that sealed David’s musical fate as he was confined to music study and later performing with his Dad at the age of sixteen years old.