A musical giant died yesterday. Ornette Coleman was and remains a personal hero for me in my search for musical expression. I can still remember when I first heard his album "The Shape of Jazz to Come"; Ornette's alto saxophone, Charlie Haden, Don Cherry, and Billy Higgins opened up, to me, a whole new world of what a note, an idea, an inspiration, a melody, an improvisation, and a song could aspire to be; also the freedom of a melody from the tonal gravity of a chord (this without the structural confines of serialism), allowing each note to stand up freely on its own.
I can't think of anything else to say, at least with what words can convey.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/12/arts/ ... .html?_r=0
Lonely Woman (from Shape of Jazz to Come):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSmYTc1Jv7w
What Reason Could I Give (Skies of America)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHv0VWPAIjU
Dancing in Your Head (Prime TIme - his double electric band)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72SVN9sO4P4
Also, for western swing fanatics, he sat in with Bob Wills on more than one occasion.
Rest in Peace, Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman
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Susan Alcorn
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Ornette Coleman
Last edited by Susan Alcorn on 12 Jun 2015 3:59 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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"So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray."
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Owen McCrory
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Ornette on Fresh Air
http://www.npr.org/2015/06/12/413914118 ... te-coleman
Aired today 6/12/15...
Terry Gross excerpted interviews with Ornette, his son Denardo (1987 & 1995), Charles Haden (1985) & Don Cherry (1990).
Aired today 6/12/15...
Terry Gross excerpted interviews with Ornette, his son Denardo (1987 & 1995), Charles Haden (1985) & Don Cherry (1990).
Last edited by Owen McCrory on 16 Jun 2015 2:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Once I met Ornette standing on line at a Pat Metheny concert at Radio City Music Hall. He was just standing next to me, so I said "hello." We talked for quite a while. He was so gracious.
Over the last 5 years especially, I've really learned a lot more about his music. I had always been a fan of his classic material from Atlantic records, but there is just so much else. Skies of America, Soapsuds, Soapsuds, Sound Grammar--I am just scratching the surface.
What Susan said in her first paragraph is the truth for me, too. It is something tremendous to aspire to.
Over the last 5 years especially, I've really learned a lot more about his music. I had always been a fan of his classic material from Atlantic records, but there is just so much else. Skies of America, Soapsuds, Soapsuds, Sound Grammar--I am just scratching the surface.
What Susan said in her first paragraph is the truth for me, too. It is something tremendous to aspire to.
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John Alexander
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Here's pianist Paul Bley's interesting account of meeting, hearing and playing with Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry for the first time, at Bley's sitdown gig at the Hillcrest club in Los Angeles, in 1958 (from Bley's autobiography, Stopping Time, Vehicule Press 1999). Bley's band included Billy Higgins, drums, Charlie Haden, bass, and Dave Pike, vibes:
"One night Billy [[Higgens] said that a friend of his, who played trumpet, had brought a saxophone player with him and wanted to sit in. Despite our policy, because no member of my group had ever invited someone to sit in, I said 'no problem.' He introduced me to Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry and without ever having heard either of them play before, we began playing our first piece together as a quintet.
"Several things happened almost at once. The audience en masse got up, leaving their drinks on the table and on the bar, and headed for the door. The club literally emptied as soon as the band began playing. The second thing that happened was that during the first saxophone solo, large parts of the music had no discreet [sic] notes that one could say were being played. As a pianist, all my notes are readily-identifiable parts of well-tempered scales, so on the spot I had to reassess my role in the group. Another thing that happened was that, for example, while Ornette was soloing on a 32-bar piece, suddenly he would play eight bars that had no relationship, or relatively little relationship to anything else in the piece. They were phrases that he would play because they fit in eight bars.
"Don Cherry's playing contained more known material and so was more easily understood. But the real surprise was, when we played a second piece, which was a Coleman original, although the solos started in the key of the original, rather than following an AABA form, they followed an A to Z form. This I had never heard done by anyone before, not in the writing of those composers who we had hoped would lead us out of the bebop wilderness, and certainly not in front of a rhythm section that was playing time. In a single gesture, all the constraints of repetitive structure fell away. The music was very exciting, the logic of it was obvious, and as soon as I heard it I realized that from now on, this was the only way to play with a rhythm section.
"Having this happen on a random night of a two-year job was a surprise, but it didn't take more than a second to understand that this was the missing link between playing totally free, without any givens, and playing bebop with changes and steady time.
"After the first set was over, Carla and I went out to the parking lot to talk. 'If we fire Dave Pike and hire Don Cherry and Ornette Colemen, we won't last out the week. What should we do?' We looked at each other and smiled and both said, 'Fire Dave Pike.'
"There was a precedent for this. In all my time in New York, sitting in with bands and so forth, if another piano player tapped you on the shoulder and said, the leader says it's okay for me to sit in and you left the piano stool, if that pianist sitting in played better than you, you *really* left the piano stool. Suddenly you were a member of the audience, he was onstage, and everybody in the club - the band, the leader, the guests sitting in - everybody understood that you were no longer a member of the band."
"One night Billy [[Higgens] said that a friend of his, who played trumpet, had brought a saxophone player with him and wanted to sit in. Despite our policy, because no member of my group had ever invited someone to sit in, I said 'no problem.' He introduced me to Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry and without ever having heard either of them play before, we began playing our first piece together as a quintet.
"Several things happened almost at once. The audience en masse got up, leaving their drinks on the table and on the bar, and headed for the door. The club literally emptied as soon as the band began playing. The second thing that happened was that during the first saxophone solo, large parts of the music had no discreet [sic] notes that one could say were being played. As a pianist, all my notes are readily-identifiable parts of well-tempered scales, so on the spot I had to reassess my role in the group. Another thing that happened was that, for example, while Ornette was soloing on a 32-bar piece, suddenly he would play eight bars that had no relationship, or relatively little relationship to anything else in the piece. They were phrases that he would play because they fit in eight bars.
"Don Cherry's playing contained more known material and so was more easily understood. But the real surprise was, when we played a second piece, which was a Coleman original, although the solos started in the key of the original, rather than following an AABA form, they followed an A to Z form. This I had never heard done by anyone before, not in the writing of those composers who we had hoped would lead us out of the bebop wilderness, and certainly not in front of a rhythm section that was playing time. In a single gesture, all the constraints of repetitive structure fell away. The music was very exciting, the logic of it was obvious, and as soon as I heard it I realized that from now on, this was the only way to play with a rhythm section.
"Having this happen on a random night of a two-year job was a surprise, but it didn't take more than a second to understand that this was the missing link between playing totally free, without any givens, and playing bebop with changes and steady time.
"After the first set was over, Carla and I went out to the parking lot to talk. 'If we fire Dave Pike and hire Don Cherry and Ornette Colemen, we won't last out the week. What should we do?' We looked at each other and smiled and both said, 'Fire Dave Pike.'
"There was a precedent for this. In all my time in New York, sitting in with bands and so forth, if another piano player tapped you on the shoulder and said, the leader says it's okay for me to sit in and you left the piano stool, if that pianist sitting in played better than you, you *really* left the piano stool. Suddenly you were a member of the audience, he was onstage, and everybody in the club - the band, the leader, the guests sitting in - everybody understood that you were no longer a member of the band."
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Earnest Bovine
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Earnest Bovine
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An artist I really admire named Joe Henry managed to get Ornette to play a solo on one of his songs about 15 years ago. He describes it like this:
"I won't say that it was easy for him to get to the root as he did, but it was essential to him, and he would settle for nothing else. He was restlessly unsatisfied after several takes that I thought brilliant, and said to me, "Joseph, I know the saxophone so well. And I still hear myself playing the saxophone. I need to keep going until I'm not playing sax anymore but just playing music."
He kept going."
The song was called Richard Pryor Addresses A Tearful Nation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vii5ydVSNec
"I won't say that it was easy for him to get to the root as he did, but it was essential to him, and he would settle for nothing else. He was restlessly unsatisfied after several takes that I thought brilliant, and said to me, "Joseph, I know the saxophone so well. And I still hear myself playing the saxophone. I need to keep going until I'm not playing sax anymore but just playing music."
He kept going."
The song was called Richard Pryor Addresses A Tearful Nation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vii5ydVSNec
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Susan Alcorn
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Wow, Mike, that is so incredible! So much feeling in the alto, like a human voice, quite a special human voice, and maybe not even a voice, just pure feeling. And the steel guitar (if that's what it is) sounds nice too.
I saw Ornette perform once, in the early to mid-nineties at Miller Outdoor Theater in Houston, Texas, with his "Prime Time" double band. The drummers were on opposite sides of the stage as were the bass players and guitar players. It was two separate bands playing to Ornette's improvisations with two totally different grooves. This provoked a mixed reaction to the audience, but what an amazing concept and what incredible energy!
I saw Ornette perform once, in the early to mid-nineties at Miller Outdoor Theater in Houston, Texas, with his "Prime Time" double band. The drummers were on opposite sides of the stage as were the bass players and guitar players. It was two separate bands playing to Ornette's improvisations with two totally different grooves. This provoked a mixed reaction to the audience, but what an amazing concept and what incredible energy!
www.susanalcorn.net
"So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray."
- Mary Oliver
"So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray."
- Mary Oliver
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Susan Alcorn
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Good article on Ornette Coleman in today's Counterpunch:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/15/ ... evolution/
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/15/ ... evolution/
www.susanalcorn.net
"So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray."
- Mary Oliver
"So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray."
- Mary Oliver
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Charlie McDonald
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Earnest Bovine
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Here are some great quotes on the subject:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/mu ... olumn.html
The link will die soon so read it now!
Most of the guys struggle to say something euphemistic such as: I respect the guy for following his own path, etc etc. My own reaction is more like Dizzy & Maynard: "He’s got bad intonation, bad technique. He’s trying new things, but he hasn’t mastered his instrument yet."
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/mu ... olumn.html
The link will die soon so read it now!
Most of the guys struggle to say something euphemistic such as: I respect the guy for following his own path, etc etc. My own reaction is more like Dizzy & Maynard: "He’s got bad intonation, bad technique. He’s trying new things, but he hasn’t mastered his instrument yet."
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Zachary Walters
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Wow I did not see until today that we lost Ornette. I heard someone once say something like, Ornette's music was challenging for most people to hear, let alone listen to, but if given a chance it would start to sound like the theme to your favorite TV show. I never got to that point with Ornette, but he definitely leaves a legacy as being a challenger to an already challenging musical genre. I greatly admire him for that.
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I think he mastered his instrument just fine for his own purposes. He once said that he sounded exactly the same the first time he ever played a saxophone as he did for the rest of his career. He knew what he wanted, and that's good enough for me.Earnest Bovine wrote: Most of the guys struggle to say something euphemistic such as: I respect the guy for following his own path, etc etc. My own reaction is more like Dizzy & Maynard: "He’s got bad intonation, bad technique. He’s trying new things, but he hasn’t mastered his instrument yet."
I haven't heard many other sax solos as profound as his solo on Lonely Woman.
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Susan Alcorn
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Ernest, thanks for sharing that article. Most, though not all, of the musicians quoted seemed to genuinely like Coleman's music. However, reading it, especially Dizzie Gillespie's comment, brought up two issues to my mind - that of taste and that of intonation.
Though there are, of course, lots of commonalities, each of us hears things differently (and sometimes I wonder whether we can really know how another human being perceives sound, color, etc.), and there is often quite an aversion to new ideas - we don't want to be sold a phony bill of goods, and there are limits, due to culture, age, and perhaps natural proclivity, as to what we can or cannot accept. I think we should always question and stretch those personal limits, but ultimately we have to honor them.
In the mid-80s I played in a side-project band, mostly of c&w musicians, that played lots of the jazz-rock fusion music that was popular at the time - Weather Report, Michael Brecker, etc. When I brought in Carla Bley's "Ida Lupino", they learned it but weren't excited about it. Then I brought in Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman", and they refused to do it (which initiated the parting of our musical ways). I remember the bass player saying that everything was out of tune; that's how he (and a lot of great musicians) heard it. To my ears, listening to Ornette, especially playing along with trumpeter Don Cherry, it was the most "in-tune" music I had ever heard. Who's right and who's wrong? What is correct intonation? It varies.
Louis Armstrong called bebop "Chinese music" (though today that could be a compliment). I'm of an age where I can remember playing with jazz musicians who were adult musicians when the Beatles came along; the comment was usually that they don't know how to play their instruments. The composer Phillip Glass was mocked and belittled for his music as were the abstract expressionists in art, the comment usually being something like, "my five year-old could do that." John Coltrane - especially in his later years was accused of "faking it" to make money; his music was branded "anti-jazz". Astor Piazzolla was exiled from his country and threatened with his life for destroying tango music. This seems to happen whenever there is something new.
Ornette was no dilettante. By the time he got to LA, he had already paid his dues traveling with R&B groups, minstrel shows, blues singers, etc. He found other musicians who heard music in the same way, and began a revolution in music, though I don't think a revolution is what he intended. (I feel like I am almost writing this post to defend Ornette Coleman's reputation, though he obviously doesn't need any defense; I completely respect others' opinions and outlooks on music - we have to be honest in our reactions) I think he just wanted to play music the way he felt it, and he had the courage to keep doing it. That (and his beautiful heart-felt music) is what I take from Ornette Coleman's legacy.
Though there are, of course, lots of commonalities, each of us hears things differently (and sometimes I wonder whether we can really know how another human being perceives sound, color, etc.), and there is often quite an aversion to new ideas - we don't want to be sold a phony bill of goods, and there are limits, due to culture, age, and perhaps natural proclivity, as to what we can or cannot accept. I think we should always question and stretch those personal limits, but ultimately we have to honor them.
In the mid-80s I played in a side-project band, mostly of c&w musicians, that played lots of the jazz-rock fusion music that was popular at the time - Weather Report, Michael Brecker, etc. When I brought in Carla Bley's "Ida Lupino", they learned it but weren't excited about it. Then I brought in Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman", and they refused to do it (which initiated the parting of our musical ways). I remember the bass player saying that everything was out of tune; that's how he (and a lot of great musicians) heard it. To my ears, listening to Ornette, especially playing along with trumpeter Don Cherry, it was the most "in-tune" music I had ever heard. Who's right and who's wrong? What is correct intonation? It varies.
Louis Armstrong called bebop "Chinese music" (though today that could be a compliment). I'm of an age where I can remember playing with jazz musicians who were adult musicians when the Beatles came along; the comment was usually that they don't know how to play their instruments. The composer Phillip Glass was mocked and belittled for his music as were the abstract expressionists in art, the comment usually being something like, "my five year-old could do that." John Coltrane - especially in his later years was accused of "faking it" to make money; his music was branded "anti-jazz". Astor Piazzolla was exiled from his country and threatened with his life for destroying tango music. This seems to happen whenever there is something new.
Ornette was no dilettante. By the time he got to LA, he had already paid his dues traveling with R&B groups, minstrel shows, blues singers, etc. He found other musicians who heard music in the same way, and began a revolution in music, though I don't think a revolution is what he intended. (I feel like I am almost writing this post to defend Ornette Coleman's reputation, though he obviously doesn't need any defense; I completely respect others' opinions and outlooks on music - we have to be honest in our reactions) I think he just wanted to play music the way he felt it, and he had the courage to keep doing it. That (and his beautiful heart-felt music) is what I take from Ornette Coleman's legacy.
www.susanalcorn.net
"So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray."
- Mary Oliver
"So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray."
- Mary Oliver
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Ed Mikenas
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Ornette Coleman
I had the opportunity to do a recording session with Ornette Coleman back in the '70's. It was a meat and potatoes session and we had time between takes to talk. Very inspirational. Ornette played from a concept he called "har-melodics" which involved playing melodies from harmonic centers vs. from chord changes. Wonderful guy. May he rest in peace.