Ornette Coleman Reviews by Gerry Fialka

Here are three ORNETTE COLEMAN concert reviews by Gerry Fialka

Angelic Mindfuck: Ornette Coleman at Disney 11–7–04

Reinventions: Ornette Coleman Quintet at UCLA 9–26–07

Ornette’s Orgasmic Odes 11–12–10

I welcome your reactions and input, Thank you, Gerry Fialka pfsuzy@aol.com Laughtears.com

1= ANGELIC MINDFUCK: ORNETTE AT DISNEY
by Gerry Fialka

Once in a great while, one attends a live music concert that constructs a heavenly haven, yet still rattles your psyche. This happened to me in the fall of 2004.

Ornette Coleman last played Los Angeles in 1990. His November 12th, 2004 concert at the Disney Hall was a grand return in a somewhat overwhelming venue. Just walking up to the Gehry building brings to mind a huge train crash. Inside the auditorium, you are immediately struck by what appears to be a giant match stick explosion — organ pipes. (I overheard one lady ask, “Look at those big pieces of wood. How did they do that?”) The vast amphitheater was warmed when Charlie Haden and band took the stage as the opening act. He commented that the pipes looked “like kryptonite.” I shed a few tears as the first low notes of just bass and piano set a profound emotional mood. Then Ernie Watts’ sax cut new contours onto the ceiling’s multi-imagery curves which reached up to the white walls glowing behind the pipes. But it was all just a little too white and nice for me, especially as I prepared mentally to be in the presence of Ornette. Haden’s set was breathing, not gasping. There was a smooth resolve to Charlie’s “solid-jackson-ness.” Definitely beautiful music, however it was contrasting with my anticipation of Ornette, who plays closer to the fury of Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra. That group’s heartfelt revolutionary air got Haden arrested in 1971 in Portugal for dedicating “Song for Che” to the black liberation movements in Mozambique and Angola.

After an opening rip-roaring reception from the audience, Ornette spoke gently, “Thank you. I hope you won’t be disappointed.” In the LA WEEKLY, Greg Burk commented on his intro, “…(as) one of improvisational music’s most extreme polarizers for 50 years, he knew what to expect.” As Ornette fired up the first song, “Jordan,” his band — drummer Denardo Coleman, and dual bassists Tony Falanga and Greg Cohen — fueled the flames.

“Coleman proffered songs marked by their capacity to swing, bite or even cry,” wrote Phil Gallo in VARIETY. Very rarely does someone deliver the goods so solidly and honestly as Coleman does. I didn’t just tear up, I wept wildly (what James Joyce called “laughtears”) as the skies of America opened with soaring angelic sax solos, buzzing basses and turbulent drums.

Denardo’s hi-hat leg wagged frantically to Falanga’s fiery bowing and Cohen’s rapid walking bass assault as Ornette held the reins to the mercurial flow. The sudden accurate stops were contrasted with infinite sensibility. This music makes sci-fi real: the signs sing, the squealing snake is eating its own tail. Reality reverberates Icarus’ dream. We are off to see the wizard of us, combining chaos with the cosmic. Coleman rejuices the joy of music as radar. The questions beckon. They stare you in the face.

Don Heckman recalled in the LA TIMES: “Backstage Friday, he was asked about a comment he once made — that when he realized that he could make a mistake while playing in free style, he knew he was on the right track. ‘Well, yes, that’s right,’ said Coleman, ‘A mistake is having to resolve something that’s out of place. Tonight, for example, I decided to look for the mistakes while I was playing. What I mean by that is that, if you’re a horn player, usually what you try to do is resolve what the bass player and piano, or two bass players, are doing. Well, I don’t try to resolve that way, I try to resolve everything in relationship to the key, and tonight that approach brought everything together between the two basses.’” The vitalist Coleman retrieved the key that magnifies the spatial vortex of living community — tactility.

Mid set Coleman swam against the current by picking up the violin and sawed up a wall of fluid boldness. Some shot for the exits. On the HowlingMonk.com website, LeRoy Downs wrote, “Those who remained cheered extra loud to compensate for those who vacated the premise much too early. It was almost like boiling out the impurities leaving the clean pure refreshing vitamins and minerals for those who appreciate eating right; a healthy dose of music for the soul.” The explorers hung tight to his wings in precise flight over childlike spontaneity. For all the taste we heard earlier from Ernie Watts’ solos, Ornette’s alto expressed dynamic note selection which transcended even the unknown territory where King Curtis might back the Master Musicians of Joujouka of Morocco.
Ornette’s solos are integrated into his compositions just like his harmolodic theory is his life. He has stated, “You can think harmolodically, you can write fiction and poetry in harmolodic.” Ornette retrieves the “complex clairvoyant” words of Marshall McLuhan and James Joyce’s FINNEGANS WAKE. Tony Gieske’s review in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER deemed, “His is a language on top of a language, one spoken, the other understood.” T.S. Eliot said that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood. And Coleman is the ultimate communicator for those willing to participate in that understanding of percept plunder.

The concert seemed to supersede any sense of time passing. Unexpectedly, Greg’s bass solo transported the listeners onto a vast highway. The drivers were simply staring at the stars when suddenly the ol’super nova himself Coleman beamed back in. The accuracy of this ensemble’s sudden stops startled me back to earth and reminded me of the words yelped by Venice philosopher Ralph, “Angelic mindfuck ! “

Frank Zappa said that composing music is like sculpting air molecules. Coleman built a safe house in the Disney Hall that night for the liberators to rise from the stale dust of normal jazz. Coleman’s crew effervesCed more questions in their musical-cave-painters cavern. In LA CITY BEAT, Kirk Silsbee described Coleman’s ability to use a venue as “…a laboratory to reorder the DNA of chord changes, keys, and tempos.” Dali called this “phoenixology.” Coleman sets the mood for the construction of a home for all diversity. Ben Watson’s turn-the-ear-into-an-eye-opening book entitled DEREK BAILEY AND THE STORY OF FREE IMPROVISATION reprints Ornette’s liner notes for the 1977 LP version of Coleman’s DANCING IN MY HEAD (sadly missing from the CD): “I feel that the music world is getting closer to being a singular expression, one with endless musical stories of mankind. Is there a mood everyone wishes at the same time and space? By listening and dancing one finds those wishes to come true in whoever might be playing or singing.”

I once asked Charlie Haden what was the old American folk song he played in the middle of an Ornette tune as a bass solo. He said, “Old Joe Clark.” “Who wrote it?” I asked. “Nobody wrote it!” Haden declared. His answer perfectly describes the universality of Ornette’s music. Every note feels as though it is being created for the first time, yet it recalls previous modes of music we’ve already experienced. This mimetic comprehensivism dangerously combines blues, jazz and beyond. It reminds me of the adage Ray Charles got from his grandmother, “Life is like licking honey off the thorn of a rose.”

It was so appropriate when Charlie Haden stepped back onto the stage for Ornette’s encore of “Lonely Woman.” The 74-year-old Coleman had turned the Disney Hall into a heaven constructed of an air molecule sculpture much like Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers — proving to be unique monuments to the human spirit and persistence of the visionary. Simon called his towers “Nuestro Pueblo,” which means “our town.” On that November evening, we all became angels with trumpets in Coleman’s town. Ornette forged from the collective clay the architecture of “Nuestro Pueblo Musica.”

Gerry Fialka 310 306 7330 pfsuzy@aol.com

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2= REINVENTIONS:
Ornette Coleman Quintet
at UCLA
9–26–07
by Gerry Fialka

Published in LA JAZZ SCENE Nov 2007

Verdi once spoke of how it is better to reinvent music than to copy it. Ornette Coleman’s recent UCLA concert mashed barrelhouse blues with Charlie Parker multi-melodies, resulting in remarkable reinventions. The standing ovations at the beginning and the end of the show duly thanked him for inventing free jazz. The thunderous clapping roared appreciation for his continued renewal now, at age 77. His sounds still “sail into a blistering human voice run” as astutely described years ago by critic Whitney Balliett. Coleman’s only spoken words introduced the first song “Follow the Sound” with “It’s your heartbeat of love, happiness and security.” Then he blasted into a horn flight that nurtured, nested and notified us to pay attention.

His blazing quintet created a safehouse with the “quality to preserve life” which is how Ornette once described the music of Joujouka, Morocco. Their textural depth induced joyous laughter from the man next to me, refreshingly rare for instrumental music. Monk’s music makes some laugh out loud, too. Thelonius said, “You got to pick the notes you really mean.” Indeed, Ornette’s sincerity struck deep. The Coleman transcendence transfixed in what Garcia Lorca called “cante jondo” (deep song).

His three bassmen Tony Falanga, Charnett Moffett & Al Macdowell along with his son Denardo on drums flipped lick city inside out. Their complimentary intuitions often matched Ornette’s electricity. As a disciplined collective they subverted control with chaos and chaos with control: fevered polyphonous pitch with stop-on-a-dime precision, all in the midst of randomly improvised sounding labyrinths. When Ornette’s trumpet blended with Charnett’s wah-wah pedal, Miles Davis’ ON THE CORNER was retrieved in all its funky splendor. This riveting ensemble gave new meanings to the phrase “beyond styles.”

During the piece “Bach,” Tony Falanga rendered his classical sensitivity to the space between the notes. It seemed to come back to center stage where we “could almost see the shape of the breath of a note,” Ornette’s quote about his plastic horn from years ago. Ornette’s alto journey evoked a huge emotional range of dynamics. It was a sea of key: crying, calling, cackling, clamoring and cantoring. I struggle to find words that really come close to what he does with the horn. Otherness? Orgasm? Who knows?

Coleman glowed in his shocking blue suit and pork pie hat. His courage to challenge his audience still thrives. His musical poetry conveys a universality. It communicates before it’s necessarily understood. “Coleman’s music forces listeners to rethink how they hear…” articulated in David Yaffe’s brilliant “The Art of the Improviser” (The Nation 5–14–07).

The living force of this Quintet’s organism animates and informs the present. We felt a wild celebratory sense as Ornette reinvented his own reinventions. “He played all the notes Bird missed” (as Thomas Pychon wrote in V) and then some.

Gerry Fialka 310–306–7330 pfsuzy@aol.com

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3= ORNETTE’S ORGASMIC ODES

UCLA 11–3–10

by Gerry Fialka

At UCLA on a calm November evening, Ornette Coleman’s explorations of beauty reached high tide. It felt like a stroll along the ocean, the calm and the chaotic crashing together on the same shore. With support from his son Denardo Coleman on drums, Tony Falanga on acoustic bass, and Al MacDowell on electric bass, Mr. Coleman’s sax and trumpet soothed the souls of an audience who came to witness an icon. It was the jazz quartet as living organism.

Coleman resides in both otherworldly and earthly realms. The music transformed the simple act of concert attendance into an exercise in all-at-onceness. This mystical merging of left and right brain evoked both the naive sing-song of children and the soulful yakking of gut-bucket blues. Though the sound was mesmerizing, I did not wish to close my eyes. Staring at this gentleman in the flashy plaid suit kept me grounded in his eight decades of living.

But there are better ways to describe it. Words do not really work. Breathing does…and asking questions about questioning does. Thinking about thinking does. Meta cognition! Ship Ahoy! As Brigitte Bardot told us, “I don’t think when I make love.”

Ornette has asked, “What is the sound of sound?” Sitting for more than ninety minutes, engulfed in Ornette, I asked, “Can we perceive perceiving?” As the quartet launched into the sudden starts and stops of “Sleep Talking,” I began to dream about dreaming.

In his 1997 interview with Jacques Derrida, Ornette said, “In improvised music, I think musicians are trying to reassemble an emotional or intellectual puzzle.” To delve deep into his harmolodic hybridizing, see Shirley Clarke’s experimental documentary “Ornette: Made In America,” which explores sexuality and the creative process.

The music sailed into the heart of darkness at sunset. I recalled Joseph Conrad’s words: With the pressure of your hands and feet, keep yourself afloat.

It was a perfect storm, high seas tactility. The rain showers of McDowell’s melodic runs augmented the waterfall of Falanga’s upright strength to reach flood levels. With decades of experience drumming for his dad, Denardo pounded a thunder of whirlpools. As the captain of the free jazz ship, Ornette steered a flotilla of shamanistic compositions that included “Turnabout,” “Bach Cello Suite #1,” “9/11,” “Peace,” and “Call of Duty.”

Two guests added to the buoyant duality. Soprano vocalist Mari Okubo flowed with Coleman’s soaring alto. Even Flea, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bassist, body-bopping some appropriate bottom, jumped into the riverrun of past guests such as Jerry Garcia, Yoko Ono, and Pat Metheny. When Coleman warmly shook Flea’s hand, we were all gripping that firmness. Ornette’s generous and gentle spirit made us all feel like we were all crew, not just passengers.

We reached safe harbor with the encore, “Lonely Woman.” Evoking an orgasmic hybrid of Junior-Walker-and-Sun-Ra-raising-Monk-in-Charlie-Parker’s-birdyard, Ornette transcended music as entertainment, ritual, or even worship. His fluid solos did not seem to start or end. I felt the stellar spirit of Buddy Bolden as his deviations invented the first anchoring notes of jazz. It reminded me of when Joe Zawinul said that Weather Report had no soloists because everyone was soloing all the time. But Ornette’s version kept us knee deep in the swamp muck (or as Frank Zappa put it, “It was only Swamp Gas”) while fulfilling Jack Kerouac’s axiom that “walking on water wasn’t built in a day.”

It takes eighty years of odes to create the soundtrack to life. Thank you, Ornette Coleman.

Gerry Fialka salutes GREG BURK, who wrote this insightful review of the same show:

http://www.metaljazz.com/2010/11/live_review_ornette_coleman_at.php

====Check out more of Gerry Fialka essays, like this one at https://venicebeachhead.org/2025/05/19/name-calling-all-idiots-by-gerry-fialka/

and his funk songs on Youtube, like Mainline My Funk — Black Shoe Polish Gerry Fialka & Tyler Bartram MMF by BSP Film Version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0StWuiBqnQ&list=RDV0StWuiBqnQ&start_radio=1