Showing posts with label Ornette Coleman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ornette Coleman. Show all posts

Saturday, June 13, 2015

The Shape of Ornette Coleman



I have a vague memory of a reading (or hearing?) an interview with rock/blues guitarist Johnny Walker.  He was asked if he still practiced when he wasn’t performing.  He replied that he didn’t because there wasn’t that much he was interested in learning.  He was listening to Ornette Coleman.  All that is very vague memory and I apologize to Walker (whom I have loved and saw twice in concert) if I remember it wrong.  It did seem to me at the time that he just tossed out a name that meant something. 
What it meant was clear.  No one in jazz has been so identified with the last great jazz advance, the movement beyond bop into the avant garde.  How much credit Coleman deserves for opening the door to that vast and wonderful and treacherous landscape, I don’t know.  He certainly deserves a lot. 
I trace Coleman’s impact on my own listening by placing in the history of my jazz music collecting.  I acquired The Shape of Jazz to Come when I joined a record club many years ago.  I got three albums for joining, one of which was Kind of Blue.  I don’t remember the other one.  I immediately loved KOB, but couldn’t make sense of TSOJTC.  I started my jazz collection with Miles Davis Quintet’s Prestige recordings and for some time I was convinced that nothing was better than hard bop.  I honestly thought, at one point, that Eric Dolphy corrupted John Coltrane.  That is a pretty good illustration of the barrier that Ornette Coleman pushed through. 
I now find myself listening to as much avant garde as anything else.  I fixed breakfast this morning to Ceil Taylor’s 2 Ts for a Lovely T.  After a dose of that, ‘Lonely Woman’, perhaps Coleman’s best known composition, seems rather tame.  Yet I can still feel the chills I felt when it first sank in. 
A lot of Coleman’s recordings have that same purple wail that digs deep in ‘Lonely Woman’.  Or else you get the bing bing, bomp, bomp, of ‘European Echoes’ on the Golden Circle recordings.  Coleman was always chasing that deep fulcrum that would tilt the human heart in a new direction. 
In case you haven’t heard, Ornette Coleman passed away last Thursday.  Here was a man.  Fortunately, we won’t have to do without him.  His legacy includes the great Atlantic recordings collected in a box: Beauty is a Rare Thing.  If you don’t have it, you want to get it.  Another treasure is his trio live At The Golden Circle.  Another gem, and an excellent introduction to his genius, is his soundtrack for the film Naked Lunch.  If you are doubtful, watch the movie. 
I am playing pieces from all these collections on my Live365 page.  Enjoy. 


Saturday, March 23, 2013

Sonny Simmons' Unsung Genuis



There are a lot of Sonny’s in jazz.  It takes more than few clicks to scroll through my IPod library from Sonny Clark to Sonny Stitt.  Tonight I added a couple of albums by alto sax man Sonny Simmons.  Simmons has by God paid his dues.  He was born in 1933 and played with a number of jazz greats in the 1960’s, including Mingus, Dolphy, and Elvin Jones.  Then he disappeared for a couple of decades, apparently living on the streets for a spell.  He reemerged in the mid 90’s. 
Simmons is described in the Penguin Guide as one of the most underappreciated jazz masters.  From what I have been listening to, I am inclined to agree. 
I am playing cuts from the two albums both recorded in 1966.  The Penguin Guide suggests Music from the Spheres as the first Simmons album you ought to have.  It is certainly a robust new thing document, leaving no doubt that you are listening to an alto virtuoso and a compositional genius.  I am playing ‘Zarak’s Symphony’ and ‘Dolphy’s Days’.  The latter is a superb bit of chameleon jazz.  You want Eric Dolphy?  I can be Eric Dolphy!  From Discogs, here is the lineup:

1.       Alto Saxophone, Written-By – Sonny Simmons
2.      Bass – Juney Booth*
3.      Drums – James Zitro
4.      Piano – Michael Cohen (2)
5.      Trumpet – Barbara Donald

I am also playing ‘Metamorphosis’ from Staying on the Watch.  If Simmons was very explicitly channeling Dolphy in the other album, here he is evidently channeling Ornette Coleman. 

1.       Alto Saxophone – Sonny Simmons
2.      Bass – Teddy Smith
3.      Percussion – Marvin Pattillo
4.      Piano – John Hicks
5.      Trumpet – Barbara Donald

This is very energetic, compelling avant garde jazz.  The piano work by Hicks has to be noted as brilliant.  I haven’t yet heard any of Simmons’ later work.  I will be hunting. 

Saturday, April 28, 2012

More Fred Anderson

A little gem, 'Dark Day', from Duets 2001: Live At The Empty Bottle, with Anderson on sax and Robert Barry on drums.  This is high octane avant garde.  Anderson's composition here reminds me a lot of 'European Echoes' from The Ornette Coleman Trio: Live At The Golden Circle.  I am playing both pieces now. 

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Jazz Note 4 Extended

I have removed the previous two shows and extended the current show by another hour.  Here is a list of the additional music.  
  1. Warm Velvet/Ivo Perelman/Sad Life
  2. Seagulls of Kristiansund/Mal Waldron Quartet/Seagulls of Kristiansund
  3. European Echoes/Ornette Coleman Trio/Live at the Golden Circle Vol. 1
  4. Memphis/Ran Blake Trio/Sonic Temples
  5. Abolish Bad Architecture/Reid Anderson/Abolish Bad Architecture
  6. Laredo/ROVA/The Works Vol. 3. 
The Perleman record (1996)  is the sort of thing you will like, if you like that sort of thing.  A saxophone trio can be pretty dry, but this one is superbly recorded and you get all the flavor of the instruments.   The Mal Waldron number is just delicious.  A stretched out romance recorded live at the Village Vanguard in 1986.  Almost as good is The Git Go, which is from the same gig.  Coleman's Live at the Golden Circle is a very strong sample of Coleman's playing.  I think he works very well in the trio format.  This odd bounce is interesting for the way Coleman's adventurous horn is easy to follow.  

Ran Blake is a fine piano player with a touch that can be both abstract and sensuous at the same time.  I highly recommend his album Short Life of Barbara Monk.  On this show I presented a piece from a two CD set: Sonic Temples.  Reid Anderson is the bass player with The Bad Plus, and has three recordings under his name.  All three are splendid.  


Finally, ROVA is an all saxophone group, with Bruce Ackley, Steve Adams, Larry Ochs, and Jon Raskin.  Their two albums The Works Vol. 2 and 3 are quite good and are available very cheaply on Amazon or eMusic.  Available very cheaply (under two bucks at Amazon) is their recording of Coltrane's Ascension.  I never warmed to Trane's version, but at that price I might give it a try. 

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Best Live Gigs

I have been thinking about a list of best live gigs, i.e., recordings made over one or more days at some live venue.  As it happens, there is a thread at the Amazon Discussion Page on Jazz just now on best live jazz.  One TS Garp began the discussion by asking: "What are the best live jazz recordings ever?"  Just the kind of question that gets me hot.  

A lot of the discussion turned on the live v. studio recording question.  My take is that live jazz is not necessarily better than studio jazz once it's in the can.  Recording quality is generally better in the studio; audience reaction is part of the joy at a club recording.  What does matter in jazz more than other kinds of music is that the musicians be playing together at the same time, and not recording individual tracks.  Jazz is about dialogue.  

But jazz is also about tradition and history.  Great live recordings stand out as moments when the musicians were facing the music as it were, and exceeded all expectations.  I recommended a number of essential live recordings:
  1. Bill Evans Live at the Village Vanguard.
  2. John Coltrane at the VV.
  3. Sonny Rollins at the VV.
  4. Art Pepper at the VV.
  5. Miles Davis at the Black Hawk.
  6. Shelly Mann and his Men at the Black Hawk.
  7. Miles Davis at the Plugged Nickel.
  8. Eric Dolphy and Booker Little at the Five Spot
  9. Thelonious Monk and Johnny Griffin at the Five Spot
  10. Monk at the It Club.
  11. Monk and Coltrane at Carnegie Hall.
Those are just some of the great jazz gigs that come to mind. This weekend I have been listening to something more edgy.  On the 3rd and 4th of December, 1965, the Ornette Coleman Trio recorded a live date at the Golden Circle in Stockholm.  For anyone still trying to figure out Coleman (and that includes me), this recording is essential data.  The trio includes David Izenzon on bass, and Charles Moffet on drums.  

The piano-less trio certainly puts almost all the weight on Coleman's horn.  Whatever he is up to, it's here.  It's challenging listening, but I have decided I like it.  Like a lot of avant garde, what is being played at any moment is not all the different from what you might hear on any classic bop recording.  But in the latter case, the playful exploration would eventually resolve into a coherent melody.  In avant garde, it frequently fails to do that.  It just rides along on the bass and drum lines, like a predator hunting for prey.  I think you have to be in a certain mood, but if you are it will grab you.  Of course, that's like saying that is the sort of thing you will like if you like that sort of thing.