LCJO Plays Ornette

[Joe]

Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis

The Music of Ornette Coleman

with Special Guest Dewey Redman

The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis celebrates avant-garde forefather Ornette Coleman, exploring seminal works of this downhome, groundbreaking composer and instrumentalist. Coleman sideman, the masterful Dewey Redman makes a special appearance at this highly anticipated event.

Performances:

Thursday & Saturday, February 19 & 21, 2004, 8pm

Alice Tully Hall

http://www.jazzatlincolncenter.org/handhel...asp?EventID=325

Edited October 30, 2003 by Joe

[Joe Christmas]

I wonder if Heaney has bought tickets.

[Simon Weil]

It's an intelligent thing to do. Wynton likes Ornette. Many of Ornette's themes are "playable". By presenting a concert of this stuff, seen through the Wynton lens, he polishes up his credentials as not being an fanatic avant-garde hater. And he doesn't actually have to do anything very avant-garde.

I guess Redman provides the "out". In more ways than one.

Simon Weil

Edited October 30, 2003 by Simon Weil

[Rooster_Ties]

If anybody sneaks a DAT into this concert, let me know -- I'd actually really like to hear it.

Now whether I'd like to ever hear it a second time (ever!!) is entirely a different story!!

[Joe]

Perhaps its an olive branch.

Or maybe I just like olives too much.

Frankly, if Ornette sees even a dime from this, I think it will have been worth it.

[bertrand]

Dewey can turn this concert into a killer. It really depends on what kind of arrangements will be used.

Bertrand.

[Joe]

It really depends on what kind of arrangements will be used.

My thoughts exactly.

[Guy Berger]

It's an intelligent thing to do. Wynton likes Ornette. Many of Ornette's themes are "playable". By presenting a concert of this stuff, seen through the Wynton lens, he polishes up his credentials as not being an fanatic avant-garde hater. And he doesn't actually have to do anything very avant-garde.

I guess Redman provides the "out". In more ways than one.

But who really cares if the music is good? (Admittedly, that is a big if.)

Guy

[7/4]

It's an intelligent thing to do. Wynton likes Ornette. Many of Ornette's themes are "playable". By presenting a concert of this stuff, seen through the Wynton lens, he polishes up his credentials as not being an fanatic avant-garde hater. And he doesn't actually have to do anything very avant-garde.

I guess Redman provides the "out". In more ways than one.

But who really cares if the music is good? (Admittedly, that is a big if.)

Guy

I do.

[7/4]

Frankly, if Ornette sees even a dime from this, I think it will have been worth it.

Probablly not, he's not playing.

[Guy Berger]

It's an intelligent thing to do. Wynton likes Ornette. Many of Ornette's themes are "playable". By presenting a concert of this stuff, seen through the Wynton lens, he polishes up his credentials as not being an fanatic avant-garde hater. And he doesn't actually have to do anything very avant-garde.

I guess Redman provides the "out". In more ways than one.

But who really cares if the music is good? (Admittedly, that is a big if.)

Guy

I meant to say:

"If the music is good, who cares?"

[Simon Weil]

Dewey can turn this concert into a killer.  It really depends on what kind of arrangements will be used.

Bertrand.

In my opinion, Wynton has the knack of creating expectations in his audience. I don't think it's a conscious thing, rather I think it's a character trait. This goes way back to his days as a "Young Lion" - i.e as a promising young player - someone of whom great things were expected.

What he's managed to do, all throughout his career, is keep his audience focused on the future. Even while his output has been patchy, he still manages to retain that aura of expectation - both about specific projects and his career in general. He plays on people's willingness to believe.

In my opinion the guy is the master of false hope.

Simon Weil

Edited October 31, 2003 by Simon Weil

[Guy Berger]

Dewey can turn this concert into a killer.  It really depends on what kind of arrangements will be used.

Bertrand.

In my opinion, Wynton has the knack of creating expectations in his audience. I don't think it's a conscious thing, rather I think it's a character trait. This goes way back to his days as a "Young Lion" - i.e as a promising young player - someone of whom great things were expected.

Simon,

It looks like most of the hope is being generated by Dewey Redman and Ornette's name. Most people here seem indifferent (at best) to Wynton's presence.

Guy

[Simon Weil]

Simon,

  It looks like most of the hope is being generated by Dewey Redman and Ornette's name.  Most people here seem indifferent (at best) to Wynton's presence.

              Guy

I am aware of that, Guy. I just wanted to point out that there is a certain element of "Waiting for Godot " with Wynton, which I myself have suffered from - and that that attaches to a lot of things he does.

I was making a general point, but I do also have intuition (bordering on certainty) that Redman won't be able to buck the trend.

Simon Weil

Edited October 31, 2003 by Simon Weil

[Soul Stream]

...just think when he catches up to "Bitches Brew."

[Lazaro Vega]

I've often wondered if Lincoln Center would ever consider a concert of Muhal Richard Abrams’ music, which spans the width and breadth of the jazz tradition in, at times, a professorial manner. It seems some of Abrams’ music is academic enough to get through the' cat can't play his horn' critics that have been around as long as Albert Ayler. Moreover it would be musically worthwhile to have some of these proficient young players exposed to some of Abrams' rehearsal methods, approach to ensemble interplay and 'improvisational compositions,' for lack of a better term.

[brownie]

I can understand why Duke Ellington does not appear when the LCJO Plays the Music of Ellington but Ornette not playing when the LCJO Plays the Music of Coleman, that really beats me! (No offense to Dewey Redman!)

Is Ornette Coleman invited to attend the concert?

[PHILLYQ]

Ornette Coleman might want to have an electric guitar or(shudder) an electric bass at the gig, and then Wynton Marsalis would have to escort him out of a concert of his own music!

[brownie]

A review of the event in The New York Times today:

February 21, 2004

JAZZ REVIEW

Saluting Ornette Coleman By Making More of Less

By BEN RATLIFF

When the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra tackled Ornette Coleman on Thursday night, as it will again tonight, every piece in the program was from Mr. Coleman's first great recording period, 1958 to 1960, and the orchestra mostly stuck by one rule: don't emulate the essences of that small-group music.

This is where jazz repertory, even in Lincoln Center's liberal refashioning of the idea, gets complicated. In playing Mr. Coleman's music, less is not necessarily more: the stark, exotic poignancy of those pianoless quartet records can't be improved upon. The jazz orchestra's solution was to use his propulsive, bouncing melodies and build upward and outward from them, to write new lines and counterlines where there were none. Not to reproduce the looseness of pitch and harmony and rhythm that his old quartets did in playing the Coleman lines, but to use the originals only as suggestions.

The bad news, I suppose, was that Mr. Coleman, 73, didn't play his saxophone. He took it in from the audience in Alice Tully Hall, and his old colleague Dewey Redman was guest soloist with the 15-piece orchestra. The good news was that much of what we heard was new music — all kinds of it, in all sizes and styles.

Wynton Marsalis's arrangement of "Ramblin'," for example, was really about six arrangements. It started with some free improvising by the orchestra's new pianist, Eric Lewis, who made thrashing, wavelike gestures over the keyboard and scratched the strings inside the piano. (I heard a lot of nervous giggles and "What's he doing?" Shades of Mr. Coleman's shocking opening at the Five Spot in 1959.)

That led into a strong vamp with close-chorded dissonances over a groove made of Herlin Riley's cymbal rhythm and Carlos Henriquez's bass thrums. Then the band vaulted in and dealt with the tune's Dixieland-like internal crisscrossing of lines, making a dense matrix even denser. When the reeds and brass dropped out and the tune opened up, suddenly it became clearer that "Ramblin' " is a blues: Mr. Redman played an abstract, dark-midnight blues solo.

You would expect the construction work to stop there and yield to the inevitable string of solos. No. Mr. Redman's solo was followed by a passing channel of thematic material, weirdly scored for two bass clarinets and three regular clarinets, a short solo by the trumpeter Marcus Printup over only bass drum and finally Mr. Lewis returning percussively (on a tune that originally and famously contained no piano) over tambourine. None of this had much to do with "Ramblin' " as you know it except for its groove and for the mandate from Mr. Coleman's music to look at old things in a fresh way, and this certainly did.

There were other surprises, some that worked and a few that didn't. Baritone saxophone, flute and clarinet turning out rich colors in "Una Muy Bonita." (Worked.) Swing rhythm and Ellingtonian harmonies for four saxophones in the middle of "Lonely Woman." (Didn't.) "W.R.U." as a duet for soprano saxophone and bass. (Not really.) A version of "T. & T.," with piccolo and march rhythm, suggesting a connection between Mr. Coleman's earthy art and folk traditions of the south. (Also worked.)

Finally, there were two pieces I want to hear again. First was "Free," with equal parts of wild free-for-all and melodious structure. For those who keep score, Mr. Marsalis has in the past been known to be uninterested in free improvisation; here, as arranger of the tune and one of its main soloists, he got past his ready store of twitchy effects and long glissandos and found a way to play outside of tonality with heart. Then there was Ted Nash's arrangement of "Kaleidoscope," a piece that moved like car-chase music. Racing drums and simmering, tonally ambiguous piano — like another layer of ride cymbal — lay underneath the wild lines on top. What a lot of work it all was, but on a tough assignment they shot for extra credit.

[7/4]

I wonder what Ornette thought of the music. B)

[Alexander]

Forget Ornette (I'm sure he just enjoyed watching Wynton squirm), I want to know what the uber-conservative Lincoln Center audience thought about all this (especially the version of "Free")! Ratliff doesn't focus on this (except at the very beginning of the concert).

I'm pleased that Wynton even acknowledged Ornette's music (and putting Dewey on the program is pretty cool too), however watered down it may have been. Maybe there's hope for him yet.

[7/4]

Forget Ornette (I'm sure he just enjoyed watching Wynton squirm), I want to know what the uber-conservative Lincoln Center audience thought about all this (especially the version of "Free")!  Ratliff doesn't focus on this (except at the very beginning of the concert).

What makes you think those are the people that went to the show? I went to two shows when he played there in July '97 and I hardly think of myself and other people who here there as "uber-conservative".

Edited February 21, 2004 by 7/4

[Lazaro Vega]

For what it is worth, guitarist Joel Fass, who's hung out here some, was in a building in New York the other day and ran across a rehearsal for this performance and lo and behold, Ornette was there.

[Alexander]

Forget Ornette (I'm sure he just enjoyed watching Wynton squirm), I want to know what the uber-conservative Lincoln Center audience thought about all this (especially the version of "Free")!  Ratliff doesn't focus on this (except at the very beginning of the concert).

What makes you think those are the people that went to the show? I went to two shows when he played there in July '97 and I hardly think of myself and other people who here there as "uber-conservative".

I am not suggesting that either you or anyone else who expressly went to see Ornette is "uber-conservative" (which I mean musically, by the way, not politically). But there are, you'll admit I'm sure, season ticket holders and other culture-fans who would go see ANYTHING the LCJO did. THAT is the conservative audience I was referring to. Most hard-core avant-gardists I know don't make the LCJO a priority...

[Christiern]

Apropos the LCJO audience, I think the following from Ratliff's piece indicates that some of the regulars probably do come to the hall with a somewhat closed (Heaney-like) mind:

• "...It ["Ramblin'"] started with some free improvising by the orchestra's new pianist, Eric Lewis, who made thrashing, wavelike gestures over the keyboard and scratched the strings inside the piano. (I heard a lot of nervous giggles and "What's he doing?" Shades of Mr. Coleman's shocking opening at the Five Spot in 1959.)"
  

Ratliff tends to approach Wynton's performances with less than candor, but here, at least, he does not fall at his feet.