Ornette RIP

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

R3 is putting the GSJ Ornette edition out on Saturday night as a tribute - can't see the series getting a repeat...

Great series Alyn. I'm not sure what and who R3 considers "significant" anymore. If Ornette artistically isn't to them then there really is no hope.

One of my recent surprises was finding that the Ray Charles band used to open up concerts with "Blues Connotation" in the late 60s/early 70s! They played it as a straight blues but hey, full circle.

Excellent tribute just now on KRTU. All of Sound Grammer, and the pick of the Atlantic, Contemporary and Bluenotes. It can.be done.

BN.

[Jazzrook]

Very sad news. Will always remember Ornette's electrifying UK debut at Fairfield Hall, Croydon nearly 50 years ago.
A true jazz great and a remarkable human being.
R.I.P. Ornette

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBU3JymeuPU

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

@ WKCRFM

"Join us as we remember and honor the Jazz
giant Ornette Coleman on WKCR 89.9 FM &
online at wkcr.org"

WKCR (Columbia University Radio) are playing nothing but Ornette until Weds June 17 in tribute. Wall to wall. 24/7.

At present playing the " Free Jazz" double quartet set.


BN..

All you need is a crate of Algerian red, a smart phone jacked through an amp and Russian tape deck with a huge box of war surplus C90s.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Ornette's electrifying UK debut at Fairfield Hall, Croydon nearly 50 years ago.

I played the CD of that concert this evening in memoriam.

(He does play trumpet on track four of that CD, by the way, 8thOb - so it's not impossible R4 played a trumpet track.

Just rather odd.)

[elmo]

Ornette was typical of those musicians who were once considered "avant garde" but through their shear melodic ability eventually win over a doubtful jazz audience. This seems to happen time and time again in jazz starting from the likes of Thelonious Monk but also including musicians like Herbie Nichols and Lester Bowie. For me the great thing about Ornette Coleman was that he may have been radical yet I think he was still deeply rooted in the blues and very much part of the same milieu that produced someone like Charley Patten. It is interesting how he jettisoned the reliance on chord changes and scales for improvisation and perhaps returned jazz to it's earlier method of melodic improvisation whilst making the music far more radical. As startlingly original as he was, his music was always connected to what the music should be about with the ability to swing and strong sense of the blues being key ingredients.

Part of the appeal of someone like Ornette Coleman is the fact that he was startlingly different and discovering his music is like belonging to an exclusive club. It took me a while to get in to his music but once you're in, the whole approach makes immediate sense. It is weird that he has enjoyed a reputation that has mirrored someone like Monk in that the compositions were initially treated with scepticism yet they have very much moved in to the mainstream. I've lost count of the musicians I've heard perform his music who might have been considered to be part of a tradition opposed to Ornette's ideas yet the hummable nature of his writing and the sing -song approach of his improvising can easily be appreciated by someone who might otherwise be in to Lester Young.

I only managed to hear Ornette Coleman perform live on one occasion and it was hugely compelling listening to his improvisatory lines bounce off the two basses as well as the jollity of Denardo's drumming. At first, it takes a degree of adjusting your ear just as you do when hearing someone perform Shakespeare but allowing yourself to plunge in to the experience makes you realise how naturalistic his approach was - something I think he had in common with the play-right.

My introduction to his music was through the "Song X" album with Pat Metheny with "Kathelin Gray" and "Mob Job" being absolute favourites. When he embarked on his Harmolodic experiments, the music may have moved with the times and inspired a whole new generation of musicians, yet the same sense of good-natured fun pervaded his music.

Free Improvisation is a double edged sword. When it works well, there are few things more compelling. It is also capable of being spectacularly dull. In being so keenly indebted to the jazz that had gone before, I felt that Ornette Coleman epitomised the joy of this spirited music in a fashion that perhaps only the Art Ensemble of Chicago have matched. I think his towering genius and originality will be missed but the humility with which launched this revolution is unlikely to be seen again. Without doubt, jazz can be considered to have been all the better as a consequence of his music.

V Nice tribute Ian

There was a short tribute on R4 Front row tonight with Soweto Kinch

Ornette was a revelation to me but I first heard his music in the mid sixties around the same time I heard Bird and I loved them both. Ornette seemed a natural extension to Bird's music - not being a musician I was not bothered about whether it was based on changes or not, it was all beautiful vibrant soulful music. "ORNETTE LIVES"

Playing some of those great compositions tonight, Peace, Blues Connotation, Tears Inside, Ramblin and of course Lonely Woman

elmo

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

V Nice tribute Ian

[Tenor Freak]

Heard this dreadful news this evening - and listening to some of his stuff now. I am pleased to say that I met him at a workshop in London in 1986, the day after Prime Time played the Camden Jazz Festival (which I also went to see - couldn't hear much as the sound in the hall was mush). Later I discovered, on the old Bored that not only did Pete Marsh attend that workshop but so too did "King Kennytone" (sic).

I realised earlier that he was the last of that old quartet to go. And so ends an era. RIP Ornette, even if your horn was one size too small.

I have been listening to this overlooked gem (even though I linked to Mob Job on Facebook):

https://youtu.be/dM5WPCsWA3M

[burning dog]

I heard Ornette when I was about 6, "Change of the Century" I guess, but didn't really get into him myself untilI was 13 or so, like elmo I Heard a similarity with Charlie Parker especially the Royal Roost cuts, the excitement of early bebop was there, As Ian says he was a natural blues player who didn't need the chords. His bands swung like crazy. The Fairfield concert and the Golden Circles are among my favourite live recordings.

[cloughie]

[QUOTE=Roehre;491532

A great musician has gone
RIP Ornette Coleman
[/QUOTE]

Indeed so.

[Beef Oven!]

Sad news. Probably my favourite Jazz musician of all time.

[Jazzrook]

R3 is putting the GSJ Ornette edition out on Saturday night as a tribute - can't see the series getting a repeat...

Alyn ~ Any chance of a JRR devoted entirely to Ornette?

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Alyn ~ Any chance of a JRR devoted entirely to Ornette?

Amen to that. I'm up for "Lorraine" again. Was that perhaps composed in memory of Lorraine Geller?

Phil Schaap was on the verge of tears last night on WKCR. "Tears inside" indeed.

BN.

[Serial_Apologist]

The atmosphere among the smallish but perfectly-formed audience at the Vortex was understandably somewhat subdued for Keith Tippett's two unaccompanied sets last night. Everybody seemed to have heard prior to arriving. "He was a good age, for a jazz musician", was Keith's verdict - and I am today kicking myself for forgetting to ask had they ever met? I suppose so, since Keith did the opener for Prime Time at the Colston Hall, sometime in the late 1980s, playing to a pin-drop attentive full house.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

I was thinking last night, morbidly, Cecil, Sonny, Roy Haynes, Louis Hayes, Paul Bley still around?

"And I'm not feeling so good myself" - Ronnie Scott.

BN.

[Jazzrook]

Ben Ratliff's obituary of Ornette in NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/12/arts/music/ornette-coleman-jazz-saxophonist-dies-at-85-obituary.html?_r=0