Ornette Coleman Quartet

LAZARO VEGA,

Lazaro Vega

since 2000

Lazaro Vega is the Jazz director and program host for Blue Lake Public Radio in Spring Lake, MI.

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Published: March 29, 2004

“ It ”

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Hill Auditorium
Ann Arbor, MI
March 19, 2004

Ornette Coleman’s acoustic jazz presentation was functional simplicity — two basses and drum set creating a tapestry of sound that he’d play endless melodies upon.

The ensemble which performed an uninterrupted (no intermission) 10 piece and single encore set Friday evening had the poise and sonic balance of a string quartet imbued with the deeply creative, highly sophisticated shape shifting instrumental relationships to harmony, melody and rhythm Coleman’s music is known for.

Though bassist Tony Falanga was assigned an arco role in the ensemble, and bassist Greg Cohen a pizzicato role which became the nexus of the band’s swing by aligning with drummer Denardo Coleman’s ever shifting rhythmic and textural flow, their places in the tempo continually altered in relation to the alto saxophonist’s songful improvisations.

What might begin as “a ballad” in slow tempo could morph by the second chorus into something all together different, sometimes with the drums and pizzicato bass flying off ahead, the arco bass floating harmonic ideas around them and the alto sax playing in the “original” or “home” meter. The congruity of the incongruous tempos created an ensemble effect that was, as Coleman might say, like the cosmos: all the planets spinning simultaneously at their own speeds, sending off their own energy, but maintaining a simultaneous direction as a solar system. The beauty of Coleman’s simplicity was spell binding.

The evening’s second number began with a driving unison figure played by the ensemble before settling into a long alto saxophone solo full of what are now patented Ornettisms — the plaintive cry, his cellular motives and their elaboration's, the riffs as familiar and identifiable as anything Charlie Parker ever used for his own identity. And, following an elaborate bowed solo by Falanga, a bit of atmospheric trumpet, mostly an augmented scale in the instrument’s high range, before the alto returned to repeat the opening melody.

A “Caravan” type feel to the rhythm of the third number, and Eastern modality to the minor-tinged melody, began a performance which was the best example of the evening of the simultaneity of different, though interrelated time feels from the instruments. Even within the drum set their were different rhythms occurring as Denardo Coleman kept an insistent hi-hat going on every beat of a fast tempo, while grooving the tom-tom oriented “Caravan” type pocket in almost a funk tempo. Enter bowed bass at a funeral pace while the walking pizzicato bass swung the band in the conventional sense. When Ornette joined he played a familiar though unidentified theme which may have come out of the 1980’s, though others suggested something from either the Town Hall concert or his Croyden concert in England. In fact, though most of the music at Hill Auditorium was new (and unidentified), the tendency to allude to his 50 year songbook throughout the night kept Coleman in melodic bliss.

If you’re familiar with “Kathelin Gray” from the “Song X” album you might be able to imagine the fourth number played, a beautifully sad melody in rubato tempo with coloristic drums effects.

For those who detract from Denardo Coleman’s drum playing, his performance Friday was a refutation. His ability was to provide the music everything it needed — speed, texture, dynamics, groove, idiosyncratic prog-rock syncopation meshing with Rashied Ali-type cymbal rides. The guy is brilliant and has huge ears for responding to the morphology of his father’s music. Denardo Coleman has a leg up on most drummers of his generation for not only absorbing the messages of Ed Blackwell and Elvin Jones, but comprehending with a personal response the subsequent developments in jazz drumming, i.e. he can take it out.

Following an audience request, “Lonely Woman” was played, as Coleman said smiling under his breath, “For everybody else.” In the section one might call the bridge he diverged from the familiar song with a sequence of harmonic steps that took him far afield before rejoining the main theme. The legendary “cry” in Coleman’s sound is no longer the rough wail of the Texas blues refugee, but something smaller yet more ubiquitous in his music. It’s hard to describe, as by “smaller” I don’t mean less full, but usually a gliss into the upper register, the blues cry distilled into an essential overarching mood.

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