I’ve never thought of Ornette Coleman and Sonny Rollins as brothers-in-arms. I figured that as the two last surviving jazz Olympians, they must share a certain measure of mutual respect, but I never thought their music sounded terribly related. After all, Ornette made his mark pushing jazz away from the rigid harmonic framework of Tin Pan Alley standards and bebop charts; Sonny made his mark as one of the greatest explorers of that framework—the Platonic ideal of jazz soloist. Yet as the two men played—Ornette excising the melody from the changes with a surgeon’s unflappable precision; Sonny probing each note with a new gusto for experimentation—I realized their music came from a similar place: a deep devotion to melody, to song, to voice above all else.
A few years ago, I heard the Chicago saxophonist Ken Vandermark give a talk after a screening of Musician, a documentary chronicling the avant-gardist at work. At one point, an audience member asked Vandermark to reflect on his influences, and he obliged saying he came out of Sonny Rollins and his explorations of melody and rhythm far more than he did John Coltrane and his experiments in harmony. In an oversimplified history of jazz, it’s common to view Coltrane as the great innovator and Rollins as the more traditional virtuoso who couldn’t get hip to the times. (Rollins's 1959 - 1962 hiatus from performing is usually chalked up to his feelings of inadequacy in the face of Coltrane and, to a lesser extent, Coleman). Vandermark, though, was arguing against the idea of Coltrane as revolutionary and Sonny as establishment hold-out. Sonny’s music wasn’t less innovative; it just came from a different place.
Ornette Coleman, like Vandermark and Rollins, is first and foremost a melodist. Ornette’s “harmolodic” approach uses melody as the music’s foundation—harmony and rhythm are built on top of it. It’s very different from a typical bebop improvisation, in which the musician develops his solo over already determined chord changes and rhythms. Much of Sonny Rollins's music follows the more traditional approach, but he's always been pushing against its boundaries. From early in his career, Rollins has favored bands without a piano, an arrangement that builds a more malleable harmonic framework. In these bands—his famous sax trios, especially—Rollins shapes solos that are full of subversions, jokes, and quotes. He never sounds concerned with wrapping up his ideas before the next chorus.
It's this preference for space that reveals the deep affinity between Rollins and Coleman. Both players helped move jazz from the rigidity of the AABA song structure to the wide-open free jazz of the 60s and 70s. That Coleman pushed this development more radically and brashly seems increasingly unimportant. On Friday night, side by side, jazz's sax kings were clearly on the same quest.
A few more thoughts on Sonny:
"One day, me and Sonny were in a cab...when the white cabdriver turned around and looked at Sonny and said, `Damn, you're Don Newcombe!'' Man, the guy was totally excited. I was amazed, because I hadn't thought about it before. We just put that cabdriver on something terrible. Sonny started talking about what kind of pitches he was going to throw Stan Musial, the great hitter for the St. Louis Cardinals, that evening..."Is there any jazz musician today who looks a lot like a famous professional athlete? And if, say, a great young bassist was a dead ringer for Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz, how many of today’s jazz fans would get it when the bassist billed himself as “Big Papi”?
Plus: The first video to surface from the concert. (It's Sonny playing "Global Warming," which is called "Global Morning" on the set list.)
A bizarre TMZ-stalks-LiLo-style video of Ornette Coleman leaving the Beacon:
And a set list of Friday night’s concert from Bret "Jazz Video Guy" Primack, via the Ottawa Citizen!
In 2008, Argentine pianist Esteban Sehinkman undertook a grand project: he would create a "real book" of compositions by Argentine jazz musicians. Anyone who has ever played in a high school jazz combo is familiar with the American real book (or "fake book"), a collection of lead sheets for pretty much every standard you can think of. The first time you play "All The Things You Are" or "Body and Soul," you're probably looking at the real book.
Sehinkman's idea was that Argentine jazz students needed to learn the music of their own country—that an Argentine student who played only American tunes would forever look north and think, "if only I'd been born in the USA!", but an Argentine student who looked at his own countrymen as fundamental referents could declare proudly, "I'm an Argentine jazz musician!"
Sehinkman's real book project has gathered compositions by 194 Argentine composers, and this week, he released a CD (you can download it for free!) of performances related to the book. You'll hear Richard Nant and his Argentos band play Guillermo Klein's "Va Román," saxophonist Ramiro Flores and his quartet take on Martin Iannacone's "Andrea en la boca," and the keyboardist/sound conjurer Mono Fontana caress Román Cea's "Vals." Most readers of this blog won't be familiar with these artists, but I highly recommend checking out the downloads (it's also streaming on the website). You can read an English version of the book's introduction, translated by yours truly, off a link on the "project" page.
On Tuesday, I'm going to be publishing an interview I did with Esteban a couple years back. For now, a few of his words:
"I think this book demystifies the idea that we don’t have roots. It’s all here! There are 150 composers. It’s all categorizable; it’s all logical. This country was formed by immigrants, by creoles, by indigenous peoples, and here, in this book, you see all of that. Tango is here! Folklore is here! Rock is here! And beneath all of the diversity of styles there’s something. It's going to help us define our roots. We’re not Horacio Salgán or traditional tango or folkloric musicians. We’re playing outside of all that..."
The highlight of the night may have been an impromptu (and brief) stand-up routine by "Professor" Irwin Corey (pictured), an irreverent 95-year-old comedian who was a frequent Carson guest and a one-time presidential nominee (the 1960 Playboy ticket). While the Vanguard crew tried to fix the sound on a short documentary assembled by Deborah Gordon (the club's crown princess), Corey shuffled to the front and began to rant. I couldn't make out a word he said, but he clearly relished hamming it up like it was, oh, say, 1942.
Henry Threadgill’s first album in eight years, This Brings Us To, Vol. 1, was originally scheduled to come out today. So, despite the fact that Pi Recordings decided to start selling the album on October 27, most outlets published their pre-release press last week.
In the early aughts, I heard Threadgill play twice at the Jazz Gallery with his current band Zooid. In a jazz world where many reedmen overflow with notes, Threadgill approaches music-making as a Zen warrior—big on both restraint and fire. For long periods, he’d step back from the stage, listening and swaying as the rest of the band explored his compositions. Then, when he witnessed a slight deficiency or the right opportunity, he’d grab his axe (mostly an alto that night) and start swinging with fury. Threadgill’s solos came in short blasts, but they were sustained enough to strike driving intensity into the center of the band’s precise rollicking.
Unfortunately, I missed Zooid’s latest New York stint (an October 25th date at Roulette) and it sounds like the band won’t be playing another show here for several months at least. That said, I (and I suspect many of you) haven’t missed out on Threadgill entirely. The jazz internets are united in Threadgill celebration!
D:O followed up last week, offering three Threadgill-signed copies of This Brings Us To, Vol. 1 to the winners of a blindfold contest and bringing us a few words on the music from Zooid’s guitarist, and the album’s producer, Liberty Ellman.
