September 23rd, 2007
Monterey Notebook: Ornette
Sunday, 2:45 p.m. – The Arena
The sound of Ornette Coleman’s saxophone flares from the Arena stage, spilling out of a roiling mass of bass tones in short, disconnected bursts. Followers of this avant-garde icon are by now accustomed to the idea of hearing Ornette with two bassists, as on his Pulitzer-winning album Sound Grammar, but now he has three. Tony Falanga and Charnett Moffett flank the leader, creating thick, elastic sheets of bowed and plucked acoustic tones, while Al McDowell sits off to the side with an electric bass, reacting directly to Coleman’s abstract blues and plaintive cries. Denardo Coleman, Ornette’s son and longtime drummer, is concealed in his position directly behind his father. But his invincible, volcanic rhythms — at once tribal, hammering and otherworldly — wrap the band in a whirling vortex of energy.
From time to time the dapper Coleman reaches for a nearby trumpet, adding mournful, gently arcing footnotes to his melodic explorations. Or grabbing his violin, Coleman deftly merges with his three bassists in a fast, tense scribbling.
Coleman’s deep-rooted connection to the blues is hardly a secret, but it’s still a jolt when this influence leaps into the foreground. Sliding into an amorphous, greasy version of a 12-bar groove, Coleman and associates draw a straight, glowing line directly from the most fundamental roots of jazz to its impenetrable outskirts. Minutes later, the group will find another continuity, improvising on Bach’s Solo Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major and taking it to outer space.
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