New arrival: Ornette Coleman

 

New Stuff: Orchestre National de Jazz

New Stuff: Old and New Dreams

New Stuff: Ornette Coleman

New Stuff: Ornette Coleman

I do have the Science Fiction album as record; in fact it's the first jazz album I ever bought. Still, I wanted it on cd as well, plus all the extras.

R.I.P. Ornette Coleman

There have been quite a few artists in my life I have admired intensely, but only a few I would have considered to be my heroes. Ornette Coleman was certainly one of them.

I was still a teenager and only slowly educating myself about music. One of my most important references was the German Rocklexikon, a mid 70s rock dictionary that I still own (and its later updates). The book did not only describe rock musicians and bands but also artists from other musical genres of importance. There was a column on Ornette Coleman, of course, and not only that. in the authors' list of 100 must-have records they listed his 1971 Science Fiction album.

So, at the age of 15 I bought my very first jazz album: Ornette Coleman's Science Fiction (which I still have in my collection to this day - I have been told it's a collectible of value by now)! I still don't know why this particular record was recommended. While there certainly is hardly such a thing as a 'bad' album by Ornette Colemen, one would pick different oness as an introduction to this artist's work. Science Fiction, like it's title, is way out there, and I truly had a hard time as an uninitiated teenager to grasp the intricacies of the compositions. Free jazz it certainly is.

I don't know too many people who like jazz (or innovative music, for that matter), and those who do are mostly friends of my age. Most people will say they can enjoy jazz a bit, but they 'hate' free jazz. At one of my dinner parties my guests mentioned just that, so my pal and I decided to play them some early Ornette Coleman, who is famed as the inventor of free jazz and who was confronted with hate and aversion for his music from begin on. To our amazement the whole party (about 10 people) disagreed that this was free jazz at all, but rather plain and simple 'normal' jazz.

The surprising insight I got form that evening is that you cannot underestimate Ornette Coleman's influence on contemporary music. It has forever changed everybody's perception of music; even those among us who may have never heard of him nevertheless have accepted his shift in what we consider 'harmonious' music. Around 1960 and well into the 70s, people (jazz experts included) would cringe at the tunes of Coleman's earliest albums; nowadays, hardly anyone understands what the fuss was all about.

This is not to say that Ornette Coleman's music is no longer challenging; the Science Fiction album was already further advanced than his first recordings and he never stopped going on. In the 70s with his Prime Time combo he started playing with electrified instruments instigating the No Wave (sometime also called free funk or punk jazz, among many other monikers) which instantly ridiculed the popular jazz rock attempts of that time. Every new Coleman was a new phase and always surprising up to today.

To me Ornette Coleman has been an example of what I consider the perfect artist: a man with an aesthetic vision all his own and breaking all the rules and incorruptibly pursuing his own path against all obstacles.

In August 2009 my pal and I finally had the luck to see him play live at the Austrian jazz festival in Saalfelden, which now seems to have been one of his last performances. Even at the age of nearly 80 he was still able to thrill and awe. Ornette Coleman was my very first starting point to the world of jazz - and innovative music - and since then his music has been the milestone for me to appreciate music in general.

New Stuff: Ornette Coleman

Finally: the complete Atlantic recordings in a re-issue for a reasonable price!

From my vaults: Ornette Coleman

Bio:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornette_Coleman

R.I.P. Ronald Shannon Jackson

I've always been a great fan, have quite a few albums with him with Music Revelation Ensemble, his Decoding Society and with Ornette Coleman's Prime Time, and I also seen him live twice with Last Exit. he died on October 19 at the age of 73.

Bio:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Shannon_Jackson

Just so thoughts

Coming home from work last Sunday I noticed a poster for an upcoming concert organized by our local Jazz Club, which rarely brings interesting artists to Regensburg. But this time - to my great astonishment - it'll be James 'Blood' Ulmer, one of the heroes of my youth! I still have his early collaboration with Ornette Coleman (another hero of mine!), Tales of Captain Black, and my favourite album of his with the Music Revelation Ensemble: No Wave. I recently went through some pain trying to get his 'hit' album Are You Glad to be in America? on cd, it's being sold at unreasonable prices. At the time (late 70s/early 80s) I was so keen to see him live, but always missed the opportunities, and most of my friends did not share my passion for his music. Nowadays, Ulmer is playing straight blues, but he's still a fanatstic guitarist, and you will always be able to recognize the sound of his guitar playing, be it free jazz or blues. So, on January 24, 2012 I'll finally get to see James 'Blood' Ulmer live in concert.

New Stuff: Ornette: Made in America

I finally got this great docuemntary on Ornette Coleman on DVD, I've been searching for it for decades.

New Stuff: Ornette Coleman

Sorting my cds I have found that I still need to add onto my Ornette Coleman collection!

New stuff

Vignettes #45

After recently having seen 79-year jazz legend Ornette Coleman in a triumphant concert at the Austrian Saalfelden jazz festival I was reminded of another concert I had attended here in Regensburg in 1995.

Don Cherry was Ornette Coleman's main accomplice, when he introduced his revolutionary free jazz in 1959/60. So Ursula and I were thrilled to hear that he was giving a concert here in town. The concert was well attended, and the audience was excited, when the band started off before Don Cherry entered the stage. But when he did appear it was quite a shock!

This man was visibly an old man and obviously quite ill. He needed help from his musicians to step up the stage and he wobbled around disorientated while they were still playing. He searched and found his trumpet and laboriously tried to fit on the mouthpiece. He let it fall, then fell on his knees to find it, until a fellow musician picked it up for him.

This went on for the rest of concert. Although he was magnificent as soon as he started playing his trumpet (and occasionally the piano), Ursula and I felt very uncomfortable, since we had the impression we were watching a dying man. In the middle of the concert there was a short break, so we left and went home, it was just too painful to watch.

A few weeks later we heard the news that Don Cherry had died on tour in Spain due to liver failure caused by hepatitis. He was 58 years old.

Miniatures #8

Just to see Ornette Coleman, one of the last living legends of jazz, in concert, I drove down to Austria with my pal Gerhard. It was 7 hours driving back and forth, all-day standing in 4 separate concerts with a lumbago killing my back, bumping into an oldtime pal I hadn't seen for 10 years.

And then the sensational music of Ornette Coleman, still sounds fresh, although he's already 79 years old and not physically fit anymore.

The day after you're back to work, and it all seems it was just some kind of phantastic dream, and the rest of the world appears to be like in a haze.

- W.K.