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Ornette Coleman confounds a new generation
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Ornette Coleman; photo: San Francisco Jazz Festival
Ornette Coleman Quartet
San Francisco Jazz Festival
8 November, 2009
Davies Symphony Hall
Fifty years ago, Ornette Coleman released The Shape Of Jazz to Come and, with it, thunderously ushered in his free jazz like Moses lugging stone tablets down from Mt. Sinai. The melodic, but obtuse, music worried listeners and critics, sure, but even the jazz establishment were wringing their hands over the guy. Trumpeter Roy Eldridge famously stated, "I've listened to him all kinds of ways. I listened to him high and I listened to him cold sober. I even played with him. I think he's jiving, baby." And it wasn't just the Shape of Jazz that Had Been that got spooked by Coleman; even jazz iconoclasts like Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus weren't sure what to make of the young alto saxophonist.
In recent years, Coleman's quartet has consisted of a hefty rhythm section--drums, stand-up bass, electric bass--and himself on sax, trumpet, and violin. This is perfect for a guy who places greater importance on melody than chord structures (a bassist can only do so much triple-stopping before his hand falls off). This four-cornered dynamic was put on display with Coleman's Grammy- and Pulitzer-winning album Sound Grammar (2005), and he is still working from this angle today.
The band is set up like a baseball infield. Al MacDowell, on electric bass at first; Coleman's son, Denardo Coleman, on drums at second; Tony Falango plucking his stand-up bass at third or bowing it at shortstop; and Coleman, himself, the pitcher on the mound. The bassists, at first and third, constantly flex this parallelogram, shifting the shape of the diamond by alternately stepping to the forefront, and melodically riffing off of Coleman, or stepping back, laying down the bed, maybe even playing a chord or two. The drummer, remains the drummer, except when the entire band plays a melody in unison. And the catcher? That's you, at home plate, trying to catch a curve ball while fielding notes thrown in from all corners of the baseball diamond.
Better acoustics would have made this task easier. But in Davies Symphony Hall, things were a little wobbly.The electric bass rumbled beneath, but wasn't aurally clear except in the upper registers; Coleman's horn was actually too loud, the drums too quiet (Insert your favorite drummer joke here); and the acoustic bass, the only instrument in this quartet that Davies Symphony Hall is designed to foster, was muffled by a flood of low-end feedback whenever it let loose a long string of notes.
Nevertheless, the crowd was rapturous. Stand-out songs included a lively melodic conversation on "Blues Connotation" and a cover of Bach's "Prelude" from the Cello Suites that was first treated on the stand-up bass with care and reverence before being gleefully razed by the entire band; they ran all over the Prelude, loved it, scratched it, and finally snuffed it out. An encore performance of "Lonely Woman" was so transfixing it momentarily left the hall silent.
On the way out of the theatre, I saw a man ask a kid what he had thought of the show. The kid was speechless, mouth agape. The man offered, "Mind-blowing, right." The kid just nodded. Coleman's jazz is like a cousin that you don't understand: He came to your house one day, stayed for 50 years, and while you really like him, you're still not quite sure what he's talking about--and neither are your kids.
While last night's show was the effective climax of SF Jazz Fest's fall season, Keb' Mo' and Solomon Burke visit Oakland's Paramount Theatre on November 21st.
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