Ornette in Chicago

[Uli]

I greatly enjoyed Ornette's show last nite with Greg Cohen, Tony Falanga basses and Denardo on drums. The group played a 11/2 hour set without intermission and performed mainly compositions of Ornette's much dissed after 70ies book which to me are as hip as anything under the sun. Ornette played beautifully on alto, a little trumpet and on one piece extended violin where the group sounded to me like chamber jazz prime time.

Looking forward to read all the critic's take in the Chicago press.

[mke]

So the verdict is "still blazing"?

[Frisco]

Uli, did you attend the jam session that Ornette was scheduled to be at afterwards?

[Uli]

Originally posted by mke
So the verdict is "still blazing"?

Mine is. But I don't think mine is the gospel. I only think it's as good as "some critics'" unless they offer me some insights rather than just opinion as Ellery so beautifully states on another thread.

Frisco, no I didn't.

[Captain Hate]

Was this part of a tour or was this a one time thing? Also anybody know if this group is gonna have any recordings out? The two bass thing is intriguing to me, especially with what Cohen brings to the mix.

[Uli]

Capt'n, can't answer your questions. The program didn't have any pictures so I don't know who is who of the two bass players. One was bold and maybe a bit on the heavy side the other more skinny. I assumed that the bold guy was Falanga because the program blurb points to his classical playing and he played more arco(a stereotypical assumption, I know). Do you know who is who?

[mke]

Yeah, classical players are always fatter.

[Captain Hate]

From pictures I would imagine that Cohen was the thinner one, but I don't know that for sure.

Btw, I really applaud Ornette for continuing to push the envelope by bringing different players and instruments into the mix. While other elder statesmen (no names) are content to sit on their laurels and never leave their comfort zone, Ornette is still out there expanding his range of expression. I may not find everything as satisfactory as I'd like to, but I still admire the output of an inquisitive mind.

Like I've said about others, Ornette isn't going to live forever. I hope one of these days he can get together with Zorn because I think the potential synergy is huge. BWTFDIK.

[Cem]

Thanks for the review, Uli. Greg Cohen is on the far right here:

[Uli]

Thanks for the picture, Cem. My assupmtion was lucky.

[Pete C]

Originally posted by Captain Hate
Was this part of a tour or was this a one time thing? Also anybody know if this group is gonna have any recordings out? The two bass thing is intriguing to me, especially with what Cohen brings to the mix.

I saw that group at Carnegie this summer, and rumor has it the show was recorded. Cohen was added to the group pretty last minute--it was originally scheduled as a trio. Ornette said that he was recently introduced to Cohen, and when they first played together he knew it was "a marriage made in heaven." He felt that adding Cohen would free up Falanga to be more of a second lead, as it turns out mostly on arco. John Pareles, who has good ears, claims that Falanga was out of tune with the rest of the band at times, but I didn't notice anything amiss--maybe it was a trompe l'oreille of the awful Carnegie acoustics. I thought Ornette's tone was prettier than ever, and that this group had the edge over the trio I saw in S.F. with Charnett Moffett (who was great playing rhythm, but he took all these fuzz-box/wah-wah grandstanding solos).

[Pete C]

Originally posted by Captain Hate
I hope one of these days he can get together with Zorn because I think the potential synergy is huge. BWTFDIK.

I can think of several hundred candidates I'd prefer.

[Uli]

Following some of town's critics' reviews:

September 29, 2003

BY KEVIN WHITEHEAD

Ornette Coleman left
Texas 50 years ago, but
listening to his alto
saxophone, you'd think it
was last week. The long
open vowels of country
blues and rural field
hollers shout through his
horn. Coleman has one of
the most distinctive and
thrilling sounds in jazz,
and he was revved up to
show it off at Symphony
Center on Friday, playing
almost straight through
one heroic 86-minute set.

It was a magnificent
display of creative, emotionally direct blues playing from a musician long tagged
with a reputation for being way out.

Detractors used to say his raw, unpredictable style trashed the rules of jazz. In
fact, Coleman revived a principle black songsters and blues singers observed
100 years ago: that a song's chorus can be flexible in length, depending on how
much you have to say on it. You can stretch a phrase, or temporarily suspend
time, without destroying or disrespecting the form.

Like a blues shouter, Coleman has his pet licks: rapid sobs, simulated laughter,
rippling melodic sequences that descend step by step, and a declamatory
phrase followed by a more muted version of same (softer, or in a lower or minor
key). But he combines them all in fresh and convincing ways, with locomotive
rhythm. His scrappy tunes -- which Friday included his classic blues
"Turnaround" and Mexican-tinged "P.P. (Picolo Pesos)" -- reveal the same
traits.

Just as the blues is both sorrowful and defiant, Coleman's cries can seem like a
moan of pain and a puppy's excited yip at the same time. (His sound is neither
happy nor sad nor hectic but all three, a German musicologist once pointed
out.)

Coleman has never explained his "harmolodic" working method very well, but in
a way it comes to this: Multiple interpretations of a melody can exist in one
musical space. He's a cubist -- a blues Picasso -- which calls for a very
sensitive band.

His acoustic quartet includes two bassists extraordinarily good at not clashing
or colliding. Greg Cohen plays walking beats that elude a specific destination.
Classical virtuoso Tony Falanga mostly used his bow, and his lines sang like a
sweet cello, or an extra horn shadowing Coleman's saxophone (or, briefly, the
leader's scraggly trumpet or scratchpad violin).

The bassists' opposing strategies amplified the music's cheerful
self-contradictions. Take the opening tune, "New York," a slow dirge Coleman
and his drummer (and son) Denardo Coleman recorded together in 1968 when
the latter was 12. As Falanga bowed the stately melody, Cohen plucked a fast,
disruptive line. Ornette Coleman entered, on Falanga's side, but at a particularly
somber moment he suddenly leapt away at Cohen's tempo, which now seemed
the logical choice all along.

Here and elsewhere, Denardo Coleman kept up a fast, springy beat on hi-hat
cymbals, bouncing the band ahead. A discreet accompanist, he'd underscore
Ornette's phrases, answer them with a musical amen or come crashing in with
perfect timing on a punchline.

The gig of the jazz season, so early? We'll be lucky to hear another that comes
close.

Kevin Whitehead is a local free-lance writer.


Coleman's sleek sounds muffle detractors'
gripes

By Howard Reich
Tribune arts critic
Published September 29, 2003

The serene, oft-ethereal musicmaking that brought an Orchestra Hall audience to a hush for
90 gloriously uninterrupted minutes over the weekend could have been conceived by only
one remarkable artist: Ornette Coleman.

Though long vilified by listeners who fear new ideas in sound, mimicked by would-be innovators lacking in original ideas and
glibly revered by observers unequipped to decode the inner workings of his idiom, Coleman may be one of the most broadly
misrepresented American musicians of the past half century.

But listen to him play -- listen to the sleek lyricism of his
sinuously long lines on alto saxophone or the searing
phrases he crafts on trumpet or the cascades of sound he
produces on violin -- and the controversies and accolades
that have swirled around Coleman since the mid-1950s seem
irrelevant. For this music, despite its harmonic sophistication
and intellectual heft, can speak as eloquently to the uninitiated
as it does to the connoisseur.

Certainly its country-blues phrasings, steeped-in-bebop
rhythms and passing references to swing vernacular give
casual listeners plenty to hang onto -- just as Coleman's
embrace of unflinching dissonance, unorthodox
instrumentation and freewheeling musical structures piques
the interest of listeners who yearn to be challenged.

Granted, the performance that Coleman and his quartet
played Friday night in Orchestra Hall was, in general, less
provocative than his once-shocking recordings of the late
1950s and early 1960s. Or perhaps it's more accurate to note that Coleman's innovations sound less shocking today because
of how deeply they have permeated our expectations of jazz improvisers. Musicians and listeners alike, in other words,
generally have come closer to Coleman's view of music than the other way around.

How else to explain the palpable impact of his performance in buttoned-down Symphony Center, where avant-garde
musicians do not frequently linger? Though the performance avoided easily discernible tunes, predictable back-beats or
applause-begging solos, listeners seemed to savor every note, breaking their silence for healthy ovations between numbers
or, occasionally, after a particularly revelatory instrumental statement.

At the center of the quartet's uncommonly translucent sound, of course, was Coleman's alto saxophone, its tone penetrating
but not loud, plangently expressive yet never ostentatious or self-aggrandizing. Even beyond the signature timbre of
Coleman's saxophone, with its unmistakable echoes of Charlie Parker's similarly blues-driven alto horn, it was the rhythmic
volatility and harmonic freedom of Coleman's statements that captured the imagination.

The opposite of traditional

To hear the man mercurially shifting from running sixteenth notes to long-held blues cries, to behold him interrupting headlong
rhythmic momentum with abrupt silences was to experience jazz improvisation at its most spontaneous. As Coleman quickly
switched from one "key" or "tonal center" to the next, as he quickly altered the direction of melodic ideas without warning,
listeners heard solos unencumbered by traditional chord progressions, familiar song patterns and other anachronisms of a
pre-Coleman musical world. But the real breakthrough of Colemans' theory of "harmolodics," as he long ago termed his
fearlessly non-chordal musical language, is its method of enabling everyone else in a band to simultaneously pursue a "free"
and deeply personal line of thought. Though some might consider this degree of improvisational freedom a prescription for
musical anarchy, at its best it can produce a music of extraordinary melodic beauty, tonal luster and textural intricacy, as it did
on this occasion.

From the evening's opening selection, "Song World," the band created more exquisite strands of melody than one might have
thought possible from four players. Coleman's buoyant, perpetually restless phrases may have initiated the proceedings, but
equally prominent roles were played by Tony Falanga, who unfolded sublimely bowed lines on bass; Greg Cohen, who
articulated plucked, pizzicato motifs on a second bass; and Denardo Coleman (the composer's son and longtime collaborator),
who provided another distinct rhythmic layer, dexterously articulated.

Reflection of bebop roots

If the next tune, an untitled new work, showed how much Coleman's bebop roots still resonate in his art, his "P.P. (Picolo
Pesos)" illustrated the man's gift for merging seemingly disparate musical philosophies, in this case classic elements of Latin
jazz with forward-thinking ideas on harmony and dissonance.

Meanwhile, those who have questioned Coleman's predilection for playing instruments apart from his white alto saxophone
had to be disarmed by his work on trumpet, which unleashed piercing exhortations, and violin, which yielded gorgeous colors
and intricate figurations.

Once Coleman and the band had left the Orchestra Hall stage, however, the night was not done, for jazz cognoscenti had
heard through the grapevine that the man later would re-emerge in the loft of the visionary Chicago percussionist-bandleader
Kahil El'Zabar. As midnight approached, about 100 acolytes gathered outside El'Zabar's Near North performance space,
eventually wandering upstairs to await Coleman's arrival.

Until then -- in an only-in-Chicago moment -- several exceptional improvisers from the locally based Association for the
Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), began to make music in radical ways made possible by Coleman's innovations of
an earlier era. Standing in front of an all-star group, El'Zabar began to conduct the players in a wholly improvised music -- with
no score, no rehearsal, no chords, no pre-ordained formula.

El'Zabar calls this method "spontaneous conduction," and though this outing proved a bit rougher than performances with his
remarkable Experimental Band, the energy, danger and freshness of the venture were thrilling nonetheless. Visiting baritone
saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett partnered brilliantly with several great Chicago players, including alto saxophonist Ernest Dawkins,
trumpeter Malachi Thompson, trombonist Isaiah Jackson, tenor saxophonist Duke Payne, keyboardist-reedist Ari Brown and
drummers Avreeayl Ra and Dushun Moseley.

When Coleman arrived, past midnight, Sen. Donne E. Trotter (D-Chicago) read a proclamation honoring the musician, and then
Coleman took the microphone.

"Everyone in this building, everyone standing here, has an idea and has creativity, and I would like everyone here to express
their ideas and express what sound is," said Coleman, offering nothing more nor less than the words he has lived by.

Then El'Zabar's impromptu band began making exultant music once again, and Coleman slipped away into the night, leaving
listeners wishing he had brought his horn but grateful that he already had given so much.

[mke]

Pretty hip senator.

[Pete C]

In NY he only played a bit of trumpet, but a bit more violin, and I must say that I too, a former skeptic, enjoyed him on both.

[Joe Carter]

Going back a few postings: Tony Falanga is a Julliard-trained, extremely talented bassist who is a great Jazz, as well as classical, player. His arco playing is unbeleivable. I've yet to hear him with Ornette but he tells me he's having a great time. He'll be perfroming solo for my afternoon wedding ceremony in a couple of weeks and then playing with Ornette that night.

Joe C.

[Pete C]

Originally posted by Joe Carter
He'll be perfroming solo for my afternoon wedding ceremony in a couple of weeks

Congrats, Joe!