Ode to Ornette

BLOW WHITE Early in his career, and unable to afford better, Coleman used a plastic saxophone.

EDITOR’S NOTE:
In 1959, a 29-year-old Ornette Coleman released his second album for Atlantic (and just his fourth in all), The Shape of Jazz to Come. The title told the simple truth: Coleman thought outside the bop and charted new territory that’s still being explored in the 21st century.

One of Coleman’s numerous disciples, Ken Vandermark, son of jazz critic Stu Vandermark, moved to Chicago in 1989. Quickly establishing himself as bandleader and blazing sax player, Vandermark set up a regular series of performances at the Empty Bottle. Live and on record, he led groups through Coleman numbers like “Happy House” and “Law Years.” He has since continued to lead the vanguard of our city’s jazz scene. In 1999, Vandermark earned a MacArthur Fellowship.

As Coleman takes a high-profile headlining slot at this year’s Jazz Fest, we asked Vandermark to write about what Coleman means to him.

I first saw Ornette Coleman in Boston during the mid-1980s. It was at the world-premiere performance, by the Kronos Quartet, of one of his compositions for strings. After the group finished the piece, it announced that the composer was present and then asked him to stand. I spun around, hoping to spot him. It’s impossible to describe how overwhelming it was finally to see him standing there, just two rows behind my chair, the person who had permanently changed music for me and anyone else who’s heard him. He wore an immaculate, gold lamé suit covered with black swans.

Ornette’s work, like that of Miles Davis, has forever altered the sonic landscape; it transcends any category. During the far-reaching course of his career, Ornette has performed and composed music for world-famous duos, trios, quartets, double quartets, chamber groups, symphony orchestras and electric funk ensembles. His voice on alto, tenor, trumpet and violin is singular and uniquely human. With it, he has extended the lineage of American music from Texas blues through Charlie Parker and into the future.

There’s a communal aspect to Ornette’s aesthetic, a kind of democracy in action. By asking the members of his groups to try to eliminate hierarchies that can exist in more conventional music—for him and his collaborators, drums become melodic, the bass provides rhythm, a saxophone can create harmonies—Ornette has been able to craft an extremely interactive framework in which to work. As with a democratic society, this demands that the individual be responsible enough to be fully informed and inquisitive in order to completely participate in the dialogue and decision-making process that’s involved.

The creative success of his bands indicates the benefit from this open thinking. Ornette’s concepts have resulted in a huge variety of music: His oeuvre includes everything from the multi-instrumental trio of Who’s Crazy to the double ensemble on Free Jazz (1960) to the symphonic Skies of America (1972) to the funk of Body Meta (1976). Looking over his career in total, one sees real diversity, a working model for the idea of freedom, something rare and well worth experiencing as we head into the months before our next presidential election.

And the people he works with are so often extraordinary. Many of them, such as Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, Ed Blackwell, Dewey Redman, Billy Higgins and James Blood Ulmer, changed what was thought to be possible on their instruments and, in doing so, also expanded the range of musical expression. Last year, Ornette won the Pulitzer Prize for music.

Since that Boston gig 20-plus years ago, I have been lucky enough to see Ornette perform many times, though not as often as I’d like. But this weekend, I and the rest of Chicago will have another opportunity to hear one of the greatest artistic figures of the 20th and 21st centuries—for free.

In 2006, at age 76, Ornette continued to push forward with a unique two-bass band on his Grammy-nominated Sound Grammar. That quartet, including his son Denardo on drums with bassists Tony Falanga and Al MacDowell, takes the stage at Petrillo Sunday 31 for the Chicago Jazz Festival; anybody who’s seen him in concert before will be there. Just be sure to arrive early to witness an individual who has motivated and maintained a revolution in music for more than half a century.

Ornette Coleman headlines the Jazz Fest’s Petrillo Music Shell stage Sunday 31 at 8:30pm.