In his “Odyssey,” Homer gave his protagonist the epithet “polytropos,” meaning “of many turns.” This descriptor captures the cunning, adaptability, and intellectual restlessness of Odysseus, a hero shaped by his ever-changing circumstances. It’s tempting to think Coleman – a musician whose career has been defined by perpetual motion, transformation, and the relentless quest for knowledge – had himself in mind when he chose Polytropos / Of Many Turns (Pi, 2024) as the title of his seventh release for Pi Recordings.

But Coleman strenuously rejects mythologizing himself and jazz Olympians alike. He cited John Coltrane’s Live at the Half Note: One Down, One Up (Impulse! Records, 2005), saying that for ‘Trane at that moment, “It wasn’t this monster record. It was just another day in what they do, but they’ve been striving at it so long that the craft has got to such a high level that, for many people, it’s high art. But for them, it’s still craft. It’s still this thing that they do.”

Coleman has been doing his own “thing” since childhood, even before he picked up a horn at age fourteen. “I remember being on the floor where I would just read through encyclopedias,” he said. “You know, crocodiles and volcanoes and planets. That stuff was fascinating to me. It was like mythology because the mythology that we have is an attempt to explain the universe using symbols and science is similar to that. It’s still an attempt to explain the universe.”

Explaining the universe—the musical universe, at least, has been Coleman’s project since he arrived in New York in 1978. He soon became part of a nascent movement of artists with similar interests who came together under the name M-Base, an acronym for Macro Basic Array of Structured Extemporization. Even the collective’s name suggests scientific inquiry. No longer dependent on encyclopedias as a source of knowledge, Coleman traveled the world to assemble a personal mythology that explained the universe of the African diaspora.

Early in his career, he was drawn to Egyptian cosmology and Afro-Diasporic spiritual traditions, using their intricate systems as a basis for his own musical language. Over time, his studies expanded to include fields such as physics, sacred geometry, and – more recently – molecular biology, particularly the structure of proteins, like the one symbolically pictured on the cover of Polytropos.

That makes Coleman something of a systems analyst, a programmer who writes in the code of music. But he rejected this characterization too—to a point.  “I don’t think of myself as being into any particular kind of systems or anything like that. I’m into life, but I’m into the detail of it–and any part of life can be an inspiration for me. It can be DNA. It can be the I-Ching. It could be mythology. Any part of that is material to tell our stories because we, in the end, are storytellers.  What stories do humans make, how do they express that, and what does that say about their condition in this universe and life and everything.”

Of all of Coleman’s musical ventures, Five Elements has been his most enduring. Founded in 1980, the group has remained a vehicle for his ever-expanding ideas, serving as both a proving ground for young musicians and a crucible for experimentation. Over the decades, the band has seen many different lineups, but its core mission remains the same: to explore improvisation, rhythm, and structure at the highest level.

Unlike many jazz projects that form and dissolve quickly, Five Elements is an ongoing experiment, one that allows for long-term artistic growth. This continuity has resulted in some of the most compelling and intricate music of Coleman’s career, with each iteration of the group building on the discoveries of the last.

“Now this may sound improbable to you, but Five Elements comes from a dream,” Coleman said. “I had this dream about the future and about this music in the future, and when I woke up, I’ve been chasing that sound that I heard in that dream ever since. Everything I’ve been doing, including, what I’m doing today, is chasing that sound.”

Five Elements has conducted that pursuit for a long time, but never with the level of sleek elegance heard on Polytropos. The recording might be Coleman’s most successful attempt to distill the essence of that sound. Unison horn lines diverge, snake, and coil around each other, ouroboros-style, riding the bounce and crack of the drums and nudged forward by the bump of a deep, dubby bass.

Polytropos captures two concerts in France at which Torontonian Rich Brown seamlessly assumed the role held by longtime bassist Anthony Tidd, who was unable to make the tour because of family commitments. The rest of the band has been part of Coleman’s musical universe for a long time.

“[Drummer Sean] Rickman goes back to ‘96, or a little bit before that. The youngest member of my band right now is Jonathan Finlayson, and he’s been playing with me since 2000, nonstop, in this case, with no breaks. So that’s a long time.”

So Five Elements has functioned much like a living organism, adapting and evolving while maintaining a distinct identity. “We’ve had our ups and downs, but that’s part of it,” Coleman reflected. “Just like a family, you argue, you fall apart, and you come back together. But that’s what makes the music deep.”

Just as Odysseus’ many turns shaped his legend, Coleman’s ceaseless curiosity has defined his artistic life. He is a true “polytropos” of jazz, navigating uncharted waters, exploring new intellectual territories, and forging a path that is uniquely his own. Yet unlike his Homeric analogue, Coleman’s journey is not about reaching a final destination, his Ithaca, but about the process itself—the continual turning, evolving, and discovering that has made his music so vital, so challenging, and so deeply human.

In 2026, Coleman will turn seventy. It’s a milestone that he might prefer to pass without notice. Yet Coleman is not without goals.

“My goal When I started five elements was longevity,” he said. “Duke had his band for 50 years [and] I told myself I’m gonna beat Duke’s record. Oh yeah. I started in 1980.

“I got a shot at it You know, I got a shot at it.”

‘Polytropos/Of Many Turns’ is out now on Pi Recordings. It can be purchased on Bandcamp. More information about Steve Coleman is available on his website. Steve Coleman and Five Elements will perform at Big Ears in Knoxville, Tennessee on March 28, 2025.