Synovial Joints is the most ambitious project of Coleman s 30+ year career, featuring 21 musicians from the jazz, Afro-Cuban, Afro-Brazilian and contemporary classical circles on horns, woodwinds, piano, vocals, percussion and strings. The music is based on the physiological processes, functions and rhythms of the human body, in particular the musculoskeletal system. Coleman also explores an orchestration technique inspired by sounds that he recorded in the Amazon Rainforest, in which instrumental colors move gradually from foreground to background, much as the variety of layered sounds reveal themselves in the rainforest.
Recently hailed as 'one of the most influential figures in the last half-century of improvised music' by the New York Times. In The Wall Street Journal, pianist Vijay Iyer said 'It s hard to overstate Steve s influence... as much as anyone since John Coltrane...'