Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Ornette Coleman at the Royal Festival Hall
RFH 9 July 2007
for Artrocker
Free jazz refreshes the parts other music cannot reach. No, really.
My dad loves jazz and there was plenty of it playing when I grew up, in the house and in the car. I love pop and indie and punk and rock, and would complain only half-joking about the ‘jazz rash’ I came out in every time I had to listen to noodly brass and bass and drums pootling along, a bit carefree, a bit jaunty, irritating. But recently it’s occurred to me that, oh, if other people say something’s great, maybe I should try it again. Not always true (the gym, ketamine) but sometimes (oysters, and, it turns out, jazz). Jazz!
Ornette Coleman won a Pulitzer prize for his album Sound Grammar last year, he’s a jazz legend, but I never listened to his stuff till this month. I went to hear him play the other night at the Royal Festival Hall, and bits of my mind that I didn’t know I had were tickled and poked and woken up, never to sleep again.
Ornette Coleman was punk long before those snotty-nosed boys in the 70s. He’s been striding fearlessly to the far edges of music since 1958 and then he’s kept going. "Rid yourself of repeating and rid yourself of style," he says. "Then you're free.” Those are not the words of a fearful man. And the punk attitude? “I taught myself everything I know. I have written symphonies and all kinds of music, and no one has taught me." He is DIY, he is anti-establishment by nature, not by choice. "I didn't know you had to learn to play. I didn't know music was a style and that it had rules and stuff, I thought it was just sound. I thought you had to play to play, and I still think that."
But does it sound good? It sounds like nothing else, like springtime in your brain, like Kurt Vonnegut’s harmoniums, like, as someone else at the gig exclaimed afterwards, “the universe being rearranged right in front of you.” First onto the stage are three (three!) bass players (Charnett Moffett and Tony Falanga on double bass, Al MacDowell on bass guitar) and a drummer (Denardo Coleman, Ornette’s son, and the gift for music was clearly passed on). These are four big jazz men, men who look like they stride gently around Brooklyn, guffawing and hugging. Coleman walks softly on, 77 years old and about half the size of them, frail but steady. His instrument is the alto sax, and he uses it to make sharp wake-up sounds and strange rhythms, new shapes and forms and thoughts in music. He plays the violin sometimes too, and the trumpet, then back to his saxophone for more new rhythms, bluesy feelings, sublime improvisations. From power and exclamation to delicacy and gentleness, like there’s no distance there at all, no difference.
Moffett is extraordinary on double bass, half chasing the thing round the stage, making sci-fi funk noises, sometimes with bow, sometimes with fingers. Falanga, on the other double bass, is suddenly playing Bach, moving and beautiful, before we head again into free jazz, taking Bach with us (he wouldn’t mind, it’s brilliant). Al MacDowell plays the bass guitar as a lead guitar, almost flamenco style, his hands and fingers flying about so fast they blur. The five of them are astonishing, improvising, making new patterns, explosions, ideas in my brain. The gig lasts almost two hours, and it’s over too soon.
After a standing ovation, Coleman picks his saxophone back up and gives us Lonely Woman, a song he wrote in 1959 and which has taken 48 years to get to me. All this new stuff to hear, to love! And some of it is SO OLD!
for Artrocker
Free jazz refreshes the parts other music cannot reach. No, really.
My dad loves jazz and there was plenty of it playing when I grew up, in the house and in the car. I love pop and indie and punk and rock, and would complain only half-joking about the ‘jazz rash’ I came out in every time I had to listen to noodly brass and bass and drums pootling along, a bit carefree, a bit jaunty, irritating. But recently it’s occurred to me that, oh, if other people say something’s great, maybe I should try it again. Not always true (the gym, ketamine) but sometimes (oysters, and, it turns out, jazz). Jazz!
Ornette Coleman won a Pulitzer prize for his album Sound Grammar last year, he’s a jazz legend, but I never listened to his stuff till this month. I went to hear him play the other night at the Royal Festival Hall, and bits of my mind that I didn’t know I had were tickled and poked and woken up, never to sleep again.
Ornette Coleman was punk long before those snotty-nosed boys in the 70s. He’s been striding fearlessly to the far edges of music since 1958 and then he’s kept going. "Rid yourself of repeating and rid yourself of style," he says. "Then you're free.” Those are not the words of a fearful man. And the punk attitude? “I taught myself everything I know. I have written symphonies and all kinds of music, and no one has taught me." He is DIY, he is anti-establishment by nature, not by choice. "I didn't know you had to learn to play. I didn't know music was a style and that it had rules and stuff, I thought it was just sound. I thought you had to play to play, and I still think that."
But does it sound good? It sounds like nothing else, like springtime in your brain, like Kurt Vonnegut’s harmoniums, like, as someone else at the gig exclaimed afterwards, “the universe being rearranged right in front of you.” First onto the stage are three (three!) bass players (Charnett Moffett and Tony Falanga on double bass, Al MacDowell on bass guitar) and a drummer (Denardo Coleman, Ornette’s son, and the gift for music was clearly passed on). These are four big jazz men, men who look like they stride gently around Brooklyn, guffawing and hugging. Coleman walks softly on, 77 years old and about half the size of them, frail but steady. His instrument is the alto sax, and he uses it to make sharp wake-up sounds and strange rhythms, new shapes and forms and thoughts in music. He plays the violin sometimes too, and the trumpet, then back to his saxophone for more new rhythms, bluesy feelings, sublime improvisations. From power and exclamation to delicacy and gentleness, like there’s no distance there at all, no difference.
Moffett is extraordinary on double bass, half chasing the thing round the stage, making sci-fi funk noises, sometimes with bow, sometimes with fingers. Falanga, on the other double bass, is suddenly playing Bach, moving and beautiful, before we head again into free jazz, taking Bach with us (he wouldn’t mind, it’s brilliant). Al MacDowell plays the bass guitar as a lead guitar, almost flamenco style, his hands and fingers flying about so fast they blur. The five of them are astonishing, improvising, making new patterns, explosions, ideas in my brain. The gig lasts almost two hours, and it’s over too soon.
After a standing ovation, Coleman picks his saxophone back up and gives us Lonely Woman, a song he wrote in 1959 and which has taken 48 years to get to me. All this new stuff to hear, to love! And some of it is SO OLD!
