| Prime Design/Time Design | |
| Type: | Live album |
| Artist: | Ornette Coleman |
| Cover: | Prime Design Time Design.jpg |
| Released: | 1985 |
| Recorded: | 1985 |
| Genre: | Jazz |
| Label: | Caravan of Dreams |
| Producer: | Kathelin Hoffman |
| Chronology: | Ornette Coleman |
| Prev Title: | Opening the Caravan of Dreams |
| Prev Year: | 1985 |
| Next Title: | Song X |
| Next Year: | 1986 |
Prime Design/Time Design is a live album written by the American jazz composer Ornette Coleman and recorded by a string quartet, with Ornette's son Denardo Coleman on drums, at the Caravan of Dreams in 1985 and released on the Caravan of Dreams label.[1] The composition is dedicated to Coleman's "best hero," Buckminster Fuller, and is an interpretation of Fuller's "vision of the birth of the universe, the fusion of chaos and harmony".[2]
Excerpts from the performance of Prime Design/Time Design appeared in Shirley Clarke's 1985 film .[3]
The AllMusic review awarded the album 1½ stars.[4]
Syd Fablo of RockSalted stated that he sees the album as "being in service of an agenda completely independent of genre categories like jazz/classical," and commented: "it is indeed remarkable how Ornette manages to create some of the same 'sourness' of tone that he achieves in his alto saxophone playing through written notation for a string quartet. And yet there is a grim, determined hopefulness to the music."[5]
All compositions by Ornette Coleman