ANGELIC MINDFUCK: ORNETTE AT DISNEY
by Gerry Fialka

Once in a great while, one attends a live music concert that constructs a heavenly haven, yet still rattles your psyche. This happened to me in the fall of 2004.

Ornette Coleman last played Los Angeles in 1990. His November 12th, 2004 concert at the Disney Hall was a grand return in a somewhat overwhelming venue. Just walking up to the Gehry building brings to mind a huge train crash. Inside the auditorium, you are immediately struck by what appears to be a giant match stick explosion - organ pipes. (I overheard one lady ask, "Look at those big pieces of wood. How did they do that?") The vast amphitheater was warmed when Charlie Haden and band took the stage as the opening act. He commented that the pipes looked "like kryptonite." I shed a few tears as the first low notes of just bass and piano set a profound emotional mood. Then Ernie Watts' sax cut new contours onto the ceiling's multi-imagery curves which reached up to the white walls glowing behind the pipes. But it was all just a little too white and nice for me, especially as I prepared mentally to be in the presence of Ornette. Haden's set was breathing, not gasping. There was a smooth resolve to Charlie's “solid-jackson-ness." Definitely beautiful music, however it was contrasting with my anticipation of Ornette, who plays closer to the fury of Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra. That group's heartfelt revolutionary air got Haden arrested in 1971 in Portugal for dedicating “Song for Che" to the black liberation movements in Mozambique and Angola.

After an opening rip-roaring reception from the audience, Ornette spoke gently, "Thank you. I hope you won't be disappointed." In the LA WEEKLY, Greg Burk commented on his intro, “...(as) one of improvisational music's most extreme polarizers for 50 years, he knew what to expect." As Ornette fired up the first song, "Jordan," his band - drummer Denardo Coleman, and dual bassists Tony Falanga and Greg Cohen - fueled the flames.

“Coleman proffered songs marked by their capacity to swing, bite or even cry," wrote Phil Gallo in VARIETY. Very rarely does someone deliver the goods so solidly and honestly as Coleman does. I didn't just tear up, I wept wildly (what James Joyce called “laughtears") as the skies of America opened with soaring angelic sax solos, buzzing basses and turbulent drums.

Denardo's hi-hat leg wagged frantically to Falanga's fiery bowing and Cohen's rapid walking bass assault as Ornette held the reins to the mercurial flow. The sudden accurate stops were contrasted with infinite sensibility. This music makes sci-fi real: the signs sing, the squealing snake is eating its own tail. Reality reverberates Icarus' dream. We are off to see the wizard of us, combining chaos with the cosmic. Coleman rejuices the joy of music as radar. The questions beckon. They stare you in the face.

Don Heckman recalled in the LA TIMES: “Backstage Friday, he was asked about a comment he once made - that when he realized that he could make a mistake while playing in free style, he knew he was on the right track. 'Well, yes, that's right,' said Coleman, 'A mistake is having to resolve something that's out of place. Tonight, for example, I decided to look for the mistakes while I was playing. What I mean by that is that, if you're a horn player, usually what you try to do is resolve what the bass player and piano, or two bass players, are doing. Well, I don't try to resolve that way, I try to resolve everything in relationship to the key, and tonight that approach brought everything together between the two basses.'" The vitalist Coleman retrieved the key that magnifies the spatial vortex of living community - tactility.

Mid set Coleman swam against the current by picking up the violin and sawed up a wall of fluid boldness. Some shot for the exits. On the HowlingMonk.com website, LeRoy Downs wrote, “Those who remained cheered extra loud to compensate for those who vacated the premise much too early. It was almost like boiling out the impurities leaving the clean pure refreshing vitamins and minerals for those who appreciate eating right; a healthy dose of music for the soul." The explorers hung tight to his wings in precise flight over childlike spontaneity. For all the taste we heard earlier from Ernie Watts' solos, Ornette's alto expressed dynamic note selection which transcended even the unknown territory where King Curtis might back the Master Musicians of Joujouka of Morocco.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Ornette's solos are integrated into his compositions just like his harmolodic theory is his life. He has stated, “You can think harmolodically, you can write fiction and poetry in harmolodic." Ornette retrieves the “complex clairvoyant" words of Marshall McLuhan and James Joyce's FINNEGANS WAKE. Tony Gieske's review in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER deemed, “His is a language on top of a language, one spoken, the other understood." T.S. Eliot said that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood. And Coleman is the ultimate communicator for those willing to participate in that understanding of percept plunder.

The concert seemed to supersede any sense of time passing. Unexpectedly, Greg's bass solo transported the listeners onto a vast highway. The drivers were simply staring at the stars when suddenly the ol'super nova himself Coleman beamed back in. The accuracy of this ensemble's sudden stops startled me back to earth and reminded me of the words yelped by Venice philosopher Ralph, "Angelic mindfuck ! "

Frank Zappa said that composing music is like sculpting air molecules. Coleman built a safe house in the Disney Hall that night for the liberators to rise from the stale dust of normal jazz. Coleman's crew effervesCed more questions in their musical-cave-painters cavern. In LA CITY BEAT, Kirk Silsbee described Coleman's ability to use a venue as “...a laboratory to reorder the DNA of chord changes, keys, and tempos." Dali called this “phoenixology." Coleman sets the mood for the construction of a home for all diversity. Ben Watson's turn-the-ear-into-an-eye-opening book entitled DEREK BAILEY AND THE STORY OF FREE IMPROVISATION reprints Ornette's liner notes for the 1977 LP version of Coleman's DANCING IN MY HEAD (sadly missing from the CD): “I feel that the music world is getting closer to being a singular expression, one with endless musical stories of mankind. Is there a mood everyone wishes at the same time and space? By listening and dancing one finds those wishes to come true in whoever might be playing or singing."

I once asked Charlie Haden what was the old American folk song he played in the middle of an Ornette tune as a bass solo. He said, "Old Joe Clark." "Who wrote it?" I asked. "Nobody wrote it!" Haden declared. His answer perfectly describes the universality of Ornette's music. Every note feels as though it is being created for the first time, yet it recalls previous modes of music we've already experienced. This mimetic comprehensivism dangerously combines blues, jazz and beyond. It reminds me of the adage Ray Charles got from his grandmother, "Life is like licking honey off the thorn of a rose."

It was so appropriate when Charlie Haden stepped back onto the stage for Ornette's encore of “Lonely Woman." The 74-year-old Coleman had turned the Disney Hall into a heaven constructed of an air molecule sculpture much like Simon Rodia's Watts Towers - proving to be unique monuments to the human spirit and persistence of the visionary. Simon called his towers "Nuestro Pueblo," which means "our town." On that November evening, we all became angels with trumpets in Coleman's town. Ornette forged from the collective clay the architecture of "Nuestro Pueblo Musica."

Gerry Fialka 310 306 7330 pfsuzy@aol.com