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Ornette Coleman at Royce Hall, UCLA in LA September 26

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 5:07 am
by johnlynch4492
Is anyone in here going?

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 7:27 am
by dds1234
I wish!

I was at the show at bonnaroo this year and unfortunately he fell out on stage due to the heat... :(

What was funny was the fact that roughly thirty percent of the audience left after the first "low tempo/ingoing" song, when Ornette really embraced the fast paced, "outgoing" free jazz improv!

In the early version of the the concept I own, George Russell writes about how strange Colemans playing is and the fact that he is neither vertical nor horizontal.* It also explains how during a conversation at a music school* Ornette asks the question. "Where/what is the tonic"?? Which was extremely interesting to me!

*unmentioned.

*supra vertical was most likely unestablished.



Flames, questions, comments???

Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2007 8:49 pm
by Bob
Coleman's early recordings captured the essence of Jazz' beginnings while being 'free' from preset chord progressions and structure. An amazing, almost paradoxical wonder that really hasn't been done as successfully since. Has anyone analysed Coleman's solos of that period from Charlie Haden's bass lines up?

Posted: Thu Oct 04, 2007 12:28 pm
by bobappleton
<<Ornette asks the question. "Where/what is the tonic"?? Which was extremely interesting to me! >>

Hi dds!

I also find this interesting. Ornette once said to me "music is about ideas.." "If you're moving from A to G, that's your idea."

I think you're referring to the idea that tones, or intervals can be musical expressions of things other than the distance between notes - such as feelings or sensations - the interval between lemon and sugar for example. Or the sound of "loss" in the blues - meaning whatever that conjures up emotionally or intellectually.

So then for me that's a way of thinking about feeling - and making sounds or images that come from my own experience - my personal artistic voice.

This from the NY Times: ''If I was playing with you, I would use your sound as a tonic,'' Coleman says. ''Everyone's tone gives you lots of information. If someone talks to you, even if they don't tell you how they feel, you can hear a certain thing in their tone. The human voice doesn't have to transpose; all it has to do is change its attitudes.''

Obviously all this exists within all musics. I like to think that George Russell and the LCC (by increasing our musical vocabulary by up to one third) gives us many more ways of expressing any concepts we choose. His appreciation and support of Ornette's music so early in his career is an example of the perpetual open mindedness required to make continuous creation.

Bob

Posted: Sun Oct 07, 2007 8:30 pm
by johnlynch4492
I was there at Royce Hall up in a second row in the balcony, it is not a real large place I would guess maybe 1,200 to 1,500 seats and I was a bit exhausted, I had flown in from the East Coast for that show and a few other things and the concert started maybe something like 21 hours after I had initially gotten up . . . I am glad I was there . . . Ornette was apparently opening their season . . . I have been scurrying around with non-musical things since I got back and forgot I had posted that question about whether anyone was going . . . although the publicity said there would be some new music there was nothing that seemed astonishingly changed and some of the pieces went back a good bit, for example he may have done "Lonely Woman" from "The Shape of Jazz to Come" or something like that as an encore. It was him on sax, trumpet and violin; drums, two basses one bowed mainly one plucked mainly and a guitar . . . it was good it was wailing and funky and real and although one piece at least was a good bit like the blues there was something like the blues to it all . . . I was tired . . . he seemed in good form and in good shape and not just "for someone of his age", he seemed to be as young as you can be . . . it went over well . . . I remember when I first heard him and for years after it sounded very different and yet it does not sound quite as different now . . . it did not seem mediated through more familiar structures or pre-conceived ideas or practices and so it sounded a bit strange or unfamiliar or "challenging" back then but something has changed, maybe it is music maybe it is me but it seemed natural that night and like a homecoming and like a good visit with a friend, I am grateful that I got to be there . . .