ornette coleman

In late November 1963, a 5000 word profile of Thelonious Monk was scheduled to appear in Time magazine. Monk was to be the cover. An interviewer and jazz aficionado Barry Farrell from Time had spent months with Monk watching him at work and relaxing at home with his family, and the Russian painter Boris Chaliapin had been commissioned to...
> jazz/2801/thelonious-monk-the-life-and-times-of-an-american-original-by-robin-dg-kelley/

In which our Norwegian big band of jazz-and-elsewhere players borrow heftily from all comers (epic soundtracks and European art films, minimalists, Afrobeat, jazz-rock) and deliver something of a quilt of jazzy colours. They say it is "Zappa-esque, more humorous prog-rock" but in its scale and changing moods, much of it...
> music/2918/jaga-jazzist-one-armed-bandit-ninja-tune-border/

When trumpeter Miles Davis turned 60 in 1986 the New York weekly Village Voice marked the occasion with a lavish 28-page supplement of essays and critical opinion. By way of introduction the editor, Gary Giddins, wrote words which seemed admirably bare and understated: “For four decades Davis has been in the forefront of American music...
> jazz/1776/miles-davis-the-autobiography-1990-miles-runs-the-voodoo-down/

Branford Marsalis, who played in bands with Sting and helmed his own Buckshot LeFonque -- which had a stab at the hip-hop-to-bebop territory -- is these days dismissive of his brief skirmishes with popular music. He’s back playing jazz and much prefers it. The audiences may be smaller but he gets to play exactly what he wants, can...
> jazz/2684/branford-marsalis-interviewed-2009-putting-the-past-to-bed/

Stastics are easy to refute. Current research shows 87.5 per cent of all statistics are made up on the spot, right? But some stats aren’t worth the trouble of arguing over. So let’s not dispute whether jazz commands about two per cent of its hometown market in the US (as Ken Burns said at the time of his insightful if...
> jazz/2495/jazz-in-print-a-selection-of-useful-biographies-and-references-in-jazz/

For two people about to write themselves into music history, their credentials were not promising. Only a few years previously, the trumpeter was so hooked on heroin that he was almost unemployable and would often fail to show for concerts. The other was a little-known saxophonist whose career was sound but unspectacular. He had played...
> jazz/2336/john-coltrane-and-miles-davis-genius-at-work-and-playing-1955-61/

Movie director David Cronenberg was a gutsy guy, asking Ornette Coleman to play on the soundtrack for his inspired but ultimately flawed realisation of crusty old Bill Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. Ornette Coleman was the perfect choice, of course – eccentric and of Burroughs’ period, he'd spent time in those hills above...
> jazz/2301/ornette-coleman-and-the-naked-lunch-soundtrack-1991-something-else-again/

It’s disappointing and embarrassing that one encounter may put you off a musician for such a long time. Then, shame-faced, you crawl your way back later and have to concede everybody else was right. When I first heard The Band I was into loud rock’n’roll and these country music guys just seemed exceptionally dull and --...
> jazz/2209/enrico-rava-and-new-york-days-the-trumpet-calls-the-faithful/

Take it from the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Anthony Kiedis. For slow romantic action when he wants to make out, it's the album he plays. Steely Dan's Donald Fagen likes the trance-like atmosphere it creates, and that it's "like sexual wallpaper." And jazz-rock guitarist John Scofield says that 35 years ago it was so common you...
> essentialelsewhere/2093/miles-davis-kind-of-blue-1959/

The night I heard Rod Stewart and Rachel Hunter had separated I went on a half serious, half parody, totally drunken Rod bender. I played all his Famously Scottish Songs (me‘n’Rod bellowing “here’s one Jacobite, won’t be home tonight” across 2am suburban streets), some of the old classics (I may have even...
> jazz/2071/charlie-parker-if-only/

The Reid Miles-designed cover of this album by altoist McLean is a Blue Note classic. The hammered-out typewriter font blown up large and the thump of the exclamation point hinted at - and the intense opener Eco confirmed - the tough music within. Altoist McLean, born in New York in 1932, studied with his neighbour Bud Powell and played...
> essentialelsewhere/1932/jackie-mclean-right-now-1965/

Nobody talks about Rahsaan Roland Kirk much anymore. Maybe it’s because his recording career was too erratic, maybe because this sometimes fright-inducing multi-instrumentalist (literally, he could play three saxophones simultaneously) went kinda strange from time to time. You know what some listeners are like – they are...
> jazz/1922/rahsaan-roland-kirk-1936-77-just-a-wildncrazy-guy/

A little over three years ago an American magazine profiled alto saxophonist David Sanborn and included a selected discography. It made terrifyingly impressive reading. Aside from almost a dozen albums under his own name – and a pretty high count of Grammy awards among them – there were the albums where he’d had a guest spot....
> jazz/1906/david-sanborn-jazz-and-elsewhere-saxophonist-interviewed-1992-where-its-at-wherever-at-is-at/

By rights, 71year old bassist/composer Charlie Haden shouldn’t be around in jazz today. Like so many of his generation he had a heroin addiction in the early 60s and often wouldn’t show up on the bandstand until midnight, and even then only be half there. But there’s also another reason. Haden was born in Shenandoah, Idaho...
> jazz/1885/charlie-haden-jazz-bassist-and-composer-like-dreamers-do/

About a month ago I was in New York and spoke to Bruce Lundvall, head of the Blue Note label. Lundvall is a jazz man from way back and has been a major player in shaping careers. He worked the jazz catalogue at Sony back when it was called Columbia, left to start the Elektra Musician label for Warners and has been helming Blue note for two...
> jazz/1867/joe-lovano-a-career-consideration-2004-sax-in-every-direction/

It is a rare jazz musician who can score a rock-radio hit -- but saxophonist Jim Pepper was a very rare jazz musician indeed. Of Kaw and Creek descent, Pepper was born in Oregon in 1941 and described himself as an "urban Indian". He spent much of his early life between family homes in Oregon and Oklahoma and although he grew up...
> essentialelsewhere/1673/jim-pepper-comin-and-goin-1983/

On the face of it, there would seem little common ground between European free jazz and the traditional music and Buddhist culture of Java. But for Aucklander Winston Marsh -- co-producer of the film Teak Leaves at the Temples the intersection is in the immediacy and “the sense of the now” in the jazz and the transience...
> culturalelsewhere/1797/teak-leaves-at-the-temples-a-film-where-free-jazz-and-traditional-javanese-music-meet/

To refer to Wynton Marsalis as a jazz musician is to unintentionally diminish him. Certainly he plays jazz trumpet, has released a couple of dozen albums in the idiom, was the catalyst for and focal point of a renaissance of jazz in the 80s and is musical director for the prestigious Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra in New York.Yes, Marsalis is a...
> jazz/1781/wynton-marsalis-interviewed-2000-once-more-back-to-the-future/

Ronnie Wickens was one of the last to leave my 50th birthday party at Portside. As I made for the door I looked back, and there he was at the bar chatting to -- maybe even chatting up -- a couple of girls in their 20s, friends of my sons' no doubt. Ronnie was somewhere past 60, but he still looked great. I don't recall what he was wearing...
> jazz/352/ornette-coleman-dave-brubeck-and-me-a-song-for-guy/

When David Harrington hit the stage it was with a lot of style. Wearing a lurex T-shirt, leather pants and ankle boots, and a tight black jacket he looked every inch the lean and rangy musician blowing into town for a couple of concerts. Beside him was the group, also all in stylish black attire. And they were greeted with rapturous...
> absoluteelsewhere/1819/the-kronos-quartet-comes-to-town-1988-the-talking-heads-of-the-classical-world/

The sudden and unexpected death of saxophonist/flute player and clarinettist Eric Dolphy just months after these exceptional studio sessions for the Blue Note label robbed jazz of one of its most distinctive voices, and left many questions hanging about where the 36-year old might have taken his music. Already he had worked with Charles...
> essentialelsewhere/1687/eric-dolphy-out-to-lunch-1964/

The cliche has become so embedded that hardly anyone questions it: “indie label good, major label bad”.   As with most generalisations it doesn’t support much scrutiny: small indie labels may be more comfortable for musicians because they know the boss, but they can also be woefully amateurish, financially incompetent...
> jazz/420/miles-davis-on-the-corner-the-man-with-the-bellbottoms/

If musical talent is in the genes then Ravi Coltrane was twice blessed: his father was the legendary tenor saxophonist John Coltrane whose spiritual and searching bebop redefined jazz in the late 50s and 60s; and his mother was the gifted pianist/composer Alice who played in her husband’s group and whose own creative contributions have...
> jazz/1764/ravi-coltrane-interviewed-2007-first-rays-of-the-new-rising-son/

English rock-writer Charles Shaar Murray had a neat, if rather obvious, line about the band Pop Will Eat Itself. If it was only pop that was eating itself, says Murray, then there would be more grounds for optimism. But at a time when music is more an industry than an art form – as Noel Gallagher observed, some bands only release music...
> jazz/1813/record-producer-john-snyder-interviewed-ethics-soul-and-a-conscience-in-the-music-industry/

It was probably about lunchtime in New York, but here in Auckland it was 4.30 am on a grim and watery Tuesday, hardly the best time to do a phone interview. Certainly not this prearranged caller to the man known as the Prince of Darkness and who has been known to open his end of the conversation with a terse “Don’t ask me no stupid...
> jazz/1777/miles-davis-interviewed-1988-man-with-the-attitude/

For even the most devout Miles Davis follower, it was difficult to anticipate what the legendary trumpeter would pull out for his one-only Auckland concert. Recent albums weren’t helpful – they sport different line-ups to the seven-piece outfit he was bringing – and overseas concert reports were divided between...
> jazz/1778/miles-davis-in-concert-1988-reviewed-the-prince-claims-the-crown/

American pianist Crispell was a longtime member of saxophonist Anthony Braxton's often demanding quartet, and that alone tells you she knows what it means to be put on the spot under the spotlight. Braxton's was assiduously thoughtful improvised music which sometimes had the discipline of mathematical construction. But with sweat. The ECM...
> music/1611/marilyn-crispell-vignettes-ecm-ode/

 In my experience, jazz people tend to live in the past. Radio programmes are more often about the greats of yesteryear than the living, jazz mags essay Ellington over ECM, and in any given year you get the clear message that record companies are more interested in reissues than recording new names. Jazz musicians too contribute to this:...
> jazz/466/ben-webster-and-art-tatum-genius-loves-company/

Few musicians remain creative their whole life. Most fall back on familiar styles or even phrases, others peak early and their career becomes a long and slightly embarrassing re-run of former glories. Yet Ornette Coleman (born in Fort Worth, Texas, 1930) has not only been restlessly inventive but is widely considered one of the great...
> absoluteelsewhere/494/ornette-coleman-notes-for-the-programme-international-festival-of-the-arts-wellington-nz-2008/

This US jazz trio comes with formidable advance notices: Rolling Stone (not exactly a jazz journal) described their music as "action packed and totally schizophrenic -- in a good way". I don't hear it quite that way. They certainly pound up a storm sometimes (the thundering repeated piano chords and percussion in the nine minute...
> music/1505/the-bad-plus-prog-do-the-math-universal/

Most people who know his music don't come to albums by jazz and Elsewhere pianist Keith Jarrett expecting to snap their fingers, smile at the swinging grooves and generally enjoy the good humour on display.Jarrett is usually a furrowed-brow listen, or in an instructively meditative mood.His emotionally dense, improvised solo piano work in the...
> essentialelsewhere/815/keith-jarrett-trio-my-foolish-heart-2007/

I thought I knew all about Ornette Coleman, a man nominally described as a jazz musician but among the most unconstrained musical geniuses of the 20th century.  I’ve got a couple of dozen Coleman albums on vinyl and at least that many CDs. I’ve got bootlegs and biographies, and a photo of Ornette and me on a couch in a New York...
> jazz/421/ornette-coleman-love-revolution-1968-the-italian-job/

Because jazz is -- as the critic Leonard Feather noted in the closing overs of the last millennium -- the classical music of the 20th century, in it you can hear the human condition reflected. Or in other words, each generation creates the jazz it requires. In the post-war period things adopted a cooler and more sophisticated mood (less...
> essentialelsewhere/796/motian-lovano-frisell-time-and-time-again-2007/

The "Buy This Album" link here is to amazon.com because my guess is there are about four copies of this album in stores across New Zealand. That's a pity -- and disappointing given it won Ornette Coleman a jazz Grammy earlier this year, and at the same time the 76-year old picked up a Lifetime Achievement honour. Coleman...
> music/1293/ornette-coleman-sound-grammar-sound-grammar/

Recently I was asked if I would contribute a page to a monthly magazine on famous musicians I had met. That part was easy, I've met quite a few. But then the person said they would like to run the article with some photographs of me with such stars. "You must have hundreds," he said. I had to disappoint him: I always saw my role as...
> essentialelsewhere/788/ornette-coleman-the-shape-of-jazz-to-come-1959/

Kirk, who died almost 30 years ago, was one of those musicians who divided jazz critics: some thought he was a showman-cum-charlatan (he could play three saxophones simultaneously) and others thought he was something close to a genius. I head cautiously more toward the latter, although he did often seem to be pulling tricks of a bag to...
> music/1035/rahsaan-roland-kirk-brotherman-in-the-fatherland-hyena-southbound/

The return of saxophonist Charles Lloyd to the frontline in the early 90s after almost two decades away has been one of the most enjoyable in jazz.  If you want to hear downright beautiful and emotionally engaging jazz albums which are seductive rather than confrontational then you can't go past the Lloyd albums of the past decade,...
> music/855/charles-lloyd-sangam-ecm-ode/

"These are the stories of Edgar Allen Poe, not exactly the boy next door," yelps a breathless-sounding Reed over dramatic, grinding guitar riffery at the start of this guest-heavy collection of diverse songs and spoken-word sections which explore the works of that peculiar, melancholic American writer with whom Reed feels...
> music/1976/lou-reed-the-raven-reprise/