WED., DECEMBER 20, 2006
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Ornette and Edsel in ’06: Getting with the Concept
by Kevin Whitehead
Thinking back over 2006’s jazz releases, two of the most vivid in my mind’s ear are Ornette Coleman’s celebrated Sound Grammar — his first new album in almost a decade — and Edsel Gomez’s American debut Cubist Music. On the surface they have little in common: alto saxist Ornette’s two-bass quartet looks nothing like Gomez’s locked-in piano trio augmented by reeds in various combinations (Don Byron’s clarinet, the saxes of Steve Wilson, Miguel Zenon, David Sanchez and Greg Tardy). Coleman and Gomez were born 32 years apart, and come at problems of organizing improvisation from different directions. But each has a concept.
I mean that to be a good thing; I don’t use the word as a snarky putdown — he’s got a concept, you dig? — which suggests someone’s conceptual reach may not be long enough to snap the best fruit from the branches. When Ornette came to New York in the late ’50s, much ink and oxygen were used up debating his concept, championed (if imperfectly understood) by some, derided by others. The great swing trumpeter Roy Eldridge famously told Nat Hentoff, “I think he’s jiving, baby. He’s putting everybody on.”
But Eldridge had the ears to hear what Coleman was actually up to: “They start with a nice lead-off figure, but then they go off into outer space. They disregard the chords and they play odd numbers of bars.” Exactly. The musician who sounded to Roy like a cat who couldn’t play changes or count looks to us like a modernist who writes pretty melodies, but reserves the right to tweak their structure on the fly: to jump out of key or stretch the form while improvising. (Art Tatum, Charles Mingus, John Lee Hooker and others had already done such things, in moderation.) Ornette’s bedrock idea was, where the form gets in the way of the musical thought you need to express, choose the music over the form.
In the half-century since, Ornette has changed his band instrumentation several times, and had his low-profile years, but he’s stuck with his concept (later refined into his grand if elusive “harmolodic theory”). On Sound Grammar, the nice lead-off figures, outer-space excursions and odd numbers of bars are still on proud display. On “Turnaround” (at around 1:40) Ornette doubles back to "correct" a botched quote from Stephen Foster’s “Beautiful Dreamer.” The balance of the quartet — with son/alter ego Denardo Coleman on drums, Greg Cohen plucking one bass and Tony Falanga sweetly bowing another — is damn near perfect, with the boss’ alto unabashedly out front (as always). Hear the country gallop of “Matador,” the marathoner’s pace of “Song X.” This is the sound of a concept that’s gone the distance.
Ornette was also controversial, early on, for his hoarse, shouting alto tone. Echoes of old Texas cowboy cries and field hollers still yelp and rasp through his saxophone lines, but over time the rough grain of his sound has been polished to a high gloss. It’s luminous, unforgettable, as jazz-iconic as Miles’ Harmon-muted trumpet.
Coleman was 75 when this album was recorded, and the resurgence of jazz elders feels like a trend; some of the year’s best albums came from tenorist Von Freeman (recorded at age 83) and pianist Hank Jones (at 87) — both with 70-something drummer Jimmy Cobb.
Of course, the success of a good concept depends on finding musicians who can breathe life into it. Ornette has always had a knack for that. So does Puerto Rican-born, ex-Brazilian-expat pianist Edsel Gomez, on the disarmingly fine album named for his concept, Cubist Music. He tapped musicians he’d played with here and there, starting with frequent employers Byron and Sanchez, and built himself into a brick rhythm section with versatile bass dynamo Drew Gress and powerhouse drummer Bruce Cox.
Everybody takes to the concept. Gomez and company build tunes, solos and backing riffs out of small blocks: a few short, distinct, and theoretically unrelated motifs which Gomez calls “unitifs.” Like Ornette he seeks to bypass the typical jazz practice of just improvising over a tune’s chords — though his band (like Ornette’s) may do that too.
You can hear the concept at work in Edsel’s solo on the opening “NYC Taxi Ride” (a Cubist revamp of Duke Ellington and Juan Tizol’s “Caravan”), propelled by the bass and drums’ stutter-stumble groove. On the tune “Juan Tizol” — Duke’s trombonist was from Puerto Rico too — you might mistake one especially catchy unitif for a good old-fashioned melodic hook. (Gomez’s birdcall-like piano figures behind Zenon’s alto also link Edsel to Ellington, who liked mynah and mockingbird licks). The composer has a real melodic gift, and ear for instrumental color — mixing, say, Wilson’s and Tardy’s flutes with Byron’s clarinet on “Harmolodic Collage.” You get music that’s jagged and lyrical at once: Cubistic.
The horn players take to the unitifs readily enough, but the idea is not so different from the kernel-based improvising many hip musicians practice already. Don Byron (who produced the album) sounds especially animated and inspired, on “Ladybug,” “The 3-3 Clavé” (with Tardy on tenor) and “The Minetta Triangle” (with Sanchez). The seasoned horn players may drift off concept here and there, in the heat of a good solo, but Gomez knows better than to fret about that. Where a concept conflicts with the music, a wise leader chooses for the latter.
I mean that to be a good thing; I don’t use the word as a snarky putdown — he’s got a concept, you dig? — which suggests someone’s conceptual reach may not be long enough to snap the best fruit from the branches. When Ornette came to New York in the late ’50s, much ink and oxygen were used up debating his concept, championed (if imperfectly understood) by some, derided by others. The great swing trumpeter Roy Eldridge famously told Nat Hentoff, “I think he’s jiving, baby. He’s putting everybody on.”
But Eldridge had the ears to hear what Coleman was actually up to: “They start with a nice lead-off figure, but then they go off into outer space. They disregard the chords and they play odd numbers of bars.” Exactly. The musician who sounded to Roy like a cat who couldn’t play changes or count looks to us like a modernist who writes pretty melodies, but reserves the right to tweak their structure on the fly: to jump out of key or stretch the form while improvising. (Art Tatum, Charles Mingus, John Lee Hooker and others had already done such things, in moderation.) Ornette’s bedrock idea was, where the form gets in the way of the musical thought you need to express, choose the music over the form.
In the half-century since, Ornette has changed his band instrumentation several times, and had his low-profile years, but he’s stuck with his concept (later refined into his grand if elusive “harmolodic theory”). On Sound Grammar, the nice lead-off figures, outer-space excursions and odd numbers of bars are still on proud display. On “Turnaround” (at around 1:40) Ornette doubles back to "correct" a botched quote from Stephen Foster’s “Beautiful Dreamer.” The balance of the quartet — with son/alter ego Denardo Coleman on drums, Greg Cohen plucking one bass and Tony Falanga sweetly bowing another — is damn near perfect, with the boss’ alto unabashedly out front (as always). Hear the country gallop of “Matador,” the marathoner’s pace of “Song X.” This is the sound of a concept that’s gone the distance.
Ornette was also controversial, early on, for his hoarse, shouting alto tone. Echoes of old Texas cowboy cries and field hollers still yelp and rasp through his saxophone lines, but over time the rough grain of his sound has been polished to a high gloss. It’s luminous, unforgettable, as jazz-iconic as Miles’ Harmon-muted trumpet.
Coleman was 75 when this album was recorded, and the resurgence of jazz elders feels like a trend; some of the year’s best albums came from tenorist Von Freeman (recorded at age 83) and pianist Hank Jones (at 87) — both with 70-something drummer Jimmy Cobb.
Of course, the success of a good concept depends on finding musicians who can breathe life into it. Ornette has always had a knack for that. So does Puerto Rican-born, ex-Brazilian-expat pianist Edsel Gomez, on the disarmingly fine album named for his concept, Cubist Music. He tapped musicians he’d played with here and there, starting with frequent employers Byron and Sanchez, and built himself into a brick rhythm section with versatile bass dynamo Drew Gress and powerhouse drummer Bruce Cox.
Everybody takes to the concept. Gomez and company build tunes, solos and backing riffs out of small blocks: a few short, distinct, and theoretically unrelated motifs which Gomez calls “unitifs.” Like Ornette he seeks to bypass the typical jazz practice of just improvising over a tune’s chords — though his band (like Ornette’s) may do that too.
You can hear the concept at work in Edsel’s solo on the opening “NYC Taxi Ride” (a Cubist revamp of Duke Ellington and Juan Tizol’s “Caravan”), propelled by the bass and drums’ stutter-stumble groove. On the tune “Juan Tizol” — Duke’s trombonist was from Puerto Rico too — you might mistake one especially catchy unitif for a good old-fashioned melodic hook. (Gomez’s birdcall-like piano figures behind Zenon’s alto also link Edsel to Ellington, who liked mynah and mockingbird licks). The composer has a real melodic gift, and ear for instrumental color — mixing, say, Wilson’s and Tardy’s flutes with Byron’s clarinet on “Harmolodic Collage.” You get music that’s jagged and lyrical at once: Cubistic.
The horn players take to the unitifs readily enough, but the idea is not so different from the kernel-based improvising many hip musicians practice already. Don Byron (who produced the album) sounds especially animated and inspired, on “Ladybug,” “The 3-3 Clavé” (with Tardy on tenor) and “The Minetta Triangle” (with Sanchez). The seasoned horn players may drift off concept here and there, in the heat of a good solo, but Gomez knows better than to fret about that. Where a concept conflicts with the music, a wise leader chooses for the latter.
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