Ornette in Minnesota

[Jon Abbey]

Derek Taylor just posted on Bagatellen:

Spent a slice of the weekend hemming and hawing over whether to scribble something on last week’s Ornette concert. Coleman touched down in the Twin Cities with his working quartet of Tony Falanga and Greg Cohen basses, Denardo on drums; their gig the apex of a three-day celebration dubbed somewhat clumsily: The Festival Dancing in Your Head. Tix were steep at a Grant-spot apiece, but damn, it’s Ornette & if The Eagles can command a hundred-fitty a head then he’s certainly worth half that bread.

Thinking long and hard I decided my post-performance equivocal feelings weren’t worth the virtual ink.

so between this and Jesse's seeming reluctance to say anything about the same show, I'm now extremely curious as to some reportage on what actually went on. thanks for any help.

[Jesse]

Not reluctant, busy.

When I pull off the Houston/Dallas thang, I'll offer something.

[Other Steve]

Good, Jesse...glad to hear it. Meanwhile, this review was circulated on the Ornette list at Yahoogroups earlier today:


Sun, Apr. 24, 2005
Ornette Coleman keeps creative juices flowing
BY DAN EMERSON
Minneapolis Pioneer Press

The writer who once summed up the appeal of jazz as "the sound of surprise" could have been writing about Ornette Coleman.

Friday night at the University of Minnesota's Ted Mann Concert Hall, the avant-garde saxophonist and composer showed that, even at the age of 75, he hasn't lost his penchant for constantly surprising his listeners.

Coleman, whose disregard for the normal rules of jazz - following written chord changes, for example - once inspired anger and ridicule even among his fellow musicians, has evolved into the role of honored elder statesman, now
that the rest of the world has caught up with his once-radical ideas.

His Twin Cities appearance, a rare event, was part of the three-day Festival Dancing in Your Head the Walker Art Center staged to celebrate its grand reopening.

The Walker's choice of Coleman, the archetypical art prophet who stays true to his own creative vision even in the face of daunting obstacles, was apropos.

The Coleman compositions the quartet played Friday night were shaped around lengthy, complicated melodies that confounded listeners' natural tendency to try to guess where the music was going. With the mind's impulse to seek the familiar and find something congruous among unfamiliar sounds, Coleman's music has a way of grabbing and holding the audience's attention.

It creates a meditative feel, even when the music becomes intense and features abrupt tempo changes, stops and starts. And the voice-like sound of Coleman's alto sax (he achieved a similar effect Friday when he picked up a violin and trumpet) intensifies the effect.

Coleman's current quartet is as unconventional in its instrumentation as in the music it plays. Besides the leader and his son, Denardo, on drums, the combo includes two acoustic bassists, Greg Cohen and Tony Falanga. The low tones of the basses complement and set off the midrange sound of Coleman's horn the way a white background sets off a painting or photo.

The quartet played about a half-dozen Coleman compositions during the course of its approximately 90-minute set. Coleman didn't identify any of them, except the finale, called "Song X." His reticence might be part of his long-standing tendency to avoid doing anything that might create preconceived notions in the minds of his audience. Like most great artists, Coleman prefers to present his art "as is," and let others make comparisons, apply value judgments and try to explain its meaning.

Dan Emerson is a freelance writer and musician in Minneapolis.

[frankiepop]

Walker Art Center staged to celebrate its grand reopening.

how many times now???

[Jesse]

Re: Emerson's piece:
Fwiw, the byline is erroneous. There is no such beast in the 4th estate as the Mpls. Pioneer Press. There is a Mpls. Star Tribune, and a St. Paul Pioneer Press, one paper on each side of the river.

With all respect to Dan Emerson: his piece refers to a suprise & subterfuge peculiar to Ornette's gig Friday night, without clarifying, imo, what he heard that was divergent or a radical departure from Coleman's previous works.

The instrumentation, if "unconventional" (not really), framed a rigidly adhered to schematic: Falanga played arco bass exclusively ('cept on the last piece, when he engaged in a minute or two of pizzicato work), Cohen in a very busy, exploratory plucked mode, Denardo wielding mallets, brushes & sticks, and Ornette, as mentioned, on alto, trumpet (concise coloratura, nicely dropped into the mix), and violin.

Ornette moves like he's bearing every one of his 75 years, wizened and frail looking, resplendent in a powder blue retro suit, something pork-pie like on his head. At times he soloed from a seated position on a high stool. He responded to the warm, sustained applause at his entrance with a turn of phrase that got stuck in my head: "I want to thank all of you who are in here..."

The pieces were extended, Ornette sounding a head or a theme on the alto, the basses twining around his lines, Falanga shadowing, echoing & inverting many of Coleman's phrases, Cohen racing all over the neck, harmolodic, verbose. If anything felt stale or overwrought by concert's end, for me, it was the prolixity of the basses. These cats seldom layed out, or responded with less than what sounded like, as I said, the basic strategy-dense clouds of dual bass busyness.

That said, Falanga is a fine arco player, quicksilver & intuitively attuned to Ornette's every change up, melodically & rhythmically.

Denardo has one of the oddest approaches to rhythm-ning I've heard, often sounding sprung free from the other three, playing around, behind, aside the ensemble. Other times, he'll lay down a groove, cymbal splashes & accents momentarily heating things up, only to return to a sort of parallel rhythm. It's difficult to convey how he operates here. He's drummed with his pops for 30 years, & I think they've long since established a mode of improvising that subverts expectations of how the drummer might play in the pocket, even under Coleman's most r & b-soaked blowing (which was in evidence at regular intervals).

Ornette's alto playing was strong, belying the stick figure he struck. He often sounded wispy, almost vaporous, at the top of the horn, but intonation true. He blew some great altissimo, over-blown & ghost notes in a few solos. He frequently would hang melodic figures in the air, spacious & diamond hard, laying out in antithesis to the buzzing, keening bassists.


I really dug the sections (there were several) when Ornette sawed the violin, Denardo dropping to quiet work on the skins ("eai" minions note-Denardo engaged the tubs at times with the rubbing, rustling, & other sensuous approaches you love Beins for), and the bassists engaging as a chamber unit. I know all about the acquired taste that is Coleman's fiddle work, but this night his bowing was various, involving both melody & overtones, above the bridge keening, etc.


The encore was a lovely Lonely Woman, the head dispatched, then the tune carried largely by the basses, with Ornette dropping in stark variations & inversions of the familiar lachrymose melody.

Again, not clear what Emerson intended above in his observation that somehow Ornette is presenting something radically divergent from what we'd expect. Perhaps he's not familiar with the chamber writing of The Ark, the Chappaqua Suite, or even Ornette's extrapolated soloing on the Naked Lunch score for orchestra. This set was without capitulation to funk (happily, he didn't reprise Dancing In Your Head to mollify an audience that had been served 90 minutes of thorny music).

For the record, audience members did beat the retreat up the aisles throughout the gig.

Forgive the length. I am no Other Steve, never write reviews & concision eludes me.

I am listening through my septuagenarian parade of gigs here (Cecil/75, Weston/79, Coleman/75, a spry Andrew Hill /68, all in the last few years).

This is the generation we'll post our oblations to, soon enough. These are the cats of the head-waters, all their tributaries extending the sound of curiosity, resistance to and release from the forebearers, the music of the present moment. I love them madly.

[Uli]

Originally Posted by Jon Abbey

thanks for any help.

[Jon Abbey]

thanks, Jesse. and Uli, as always, thanks for your insight.

[Jesse]

You're welcome. I typed to Yao's 33 points.

(Sounds like a Maoist reform program).

[Pete C]

Jesse, I'm confused. Are you sure it was Cohen, not Falanga, playing arco? It was the other way around the two times I saw the group, and I'd be surprised if it has changed.

[Steve Reynolds]

as per usual, the *real* review wasn't in the paper

the guy couldn't even recognize Lonely Woman....

thanks much, Mr. Jesse

[Jesse]

My errata!

Fixed!



Thanks, Pete.

You saw these guys twice, yes?

Did you weary of the basses after awhile?

[Pete C]

Originally Posted by Jesse

Did you weary of the basses after awhile?

No, I thought Falanga's 2nd lead voice works, and that the two basses provide an interesting texture for Ornette to play on top of--something like a cross between his acoustic trio and some of the density of Prime Time.

[Dennis Gonzalez]

Very poetic, Jesse.

[Enforcer]

Interesting stuff. I haven't had a chance to see Ornette in ages. The last time was during his Song X tour with Pat Metheny. Denardo and Jack DeJohnette both played drums that night, although Denardo was playing electronic drums while DeJohnette played a conventional trap set. I found Denardo a distraction that night, but Ornette sounded great. I'm guessing that was about 18 years ago now, at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor.

[hearsay]

Originally Posted by Jesse

Did you weary of the basses after awhile?

I saw them only once, but I wearied of Denardo after a while. He seemed too fusion-y and lacking subtlety.