[Dixielandjazz] E. Dankworth plays Ornette Coleman, New Orleans Style

[Stephen Barbone]

Well. you just have to love this article. Covers everything from playing
under a pseudonym to OKOM versions of Ornette Coleman songs.

OKOMers mentioned include Roswell Rudd, trombone (also avante garde,
previously discussed on the DJML), Herlin Riley, drums, Greg Cohen, Bass
and Scott Robinson, reeds and of course, the low profile E. Dankworth on
trumpet.

Hopefully, we can appreciate the minds of these players who are
extending New Orleans Jazz into new territory rather than just reprising
it along with laments of the passing of the good old days. :-) VBG.

Wish I had been there.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone



May 19, 2004 - N Y Times

JAZZ REVIEW  By BEN RATLIFF

Old Guard and Avant-Garde Celebrate Common Ground

    Jazz bohemians — people who believe in the virtue of making one's
own aesthetic rules and that standard technique is confining — love
Ornette Coleman. Metaphorically Mr. Coleman questioned his parents, if
his parents were Charlie Parker, the blues and American popular song. He
broke from the family business, constructing a new system of flexible
tonality, rhythm and song structure.

Despite Mr. Coleman's nearly 50 years of notoriety since he arrived in
New York and became a succès de scandale — many older musicians simply
thought he was joking at first — he is not much of a polarizing force in
jazz anymore. You might find some European shock tactics in his work,
but you will also find
abundant reserves of all that is happy and mighty in American music.

The popular notion about the trombonist Roswell Rudd, who has been
playing New Orleans music and free jazz since the late 1950's, is that
he is a bohemian. The popular notion about the 42-year-old trumpeter
Wynton Marsalis, who grew up in New Orleans and has been a rather public
arbiter and judge of the jazz tradition for two decades, is that he is
not a bohemian.

But they both like Mr. Coleman's music, and on Monday at Merkin Concert
Hall, as part of the Jazz Breakthroughs series, programmed by the D.J.
and jazz historian Phil Schaap, they played his compositions in more or
less a traditional New Orleans context. (For contractual reasons, Mr.
Marsalis was advertised as E. Dankworth, the name he uses whenever he
wants to slip under the radar.)

The point of the concert, performed without amplification, was that
underneath all the exegetic blah-blah about what changes Mr. Coleman has
spurred in jazz, he has composed beautiful lines, and organized them
polyphonically; their songful, intertwining quality connects his work to
the New Orleans style of the 1920's.

In the first half Mr. Rudd played them in a quartet setting, with Scott
Robinson on saxophones and clarinet, Greg Cohen on bass and Herlin Riley
on drums. Here, aside from some of Mr. Rudd's cantankerous early-jazz
phrasing, the music was not particularly Dixielandish: "Bird Food,"
"When Will the Blues Leave"
and a few others proceeded as Ornette qua Ornette.

Occasionally the lack of a strong arrangement idea made the music watery
and vague; at those moments Mr. Riley helped snap things together with a
single spontaneous gesture, as he did with some stop-time figures in
"Dancing in Your Head."

But in the second half, when Mr. Marsalis made the band a quintet, Mr.
Riley's swing expanded. The whole thing gained a sense of purpose. The
communication between trumpeter and drummer — they have played together
for 16 years — made a difference; so did a higher quotient of New
Orleans feeling. Where Mr.
Marsalis laid out neat, clean-toned melody lines, Mr. Rudd weaved
raffish, inventive counterpoint around then, and in the agreeable
context of the music they illustrated their different approaches.

In "Ramblin' " the band went for its deepest swing: Mr. Riley shook a
tambourine, and eventually struck his drums with it. Mr. Marsalis began
the tune by whistling an improvisation. They were thinking of a New
Orleans parade groove, and Mr. Marsalis moved his body accordingly,
stomping his heels to accent the rhythm.

Finally, in "Sadness," Mr. Cohen played double-stops and glissandos
against just Mr. Marsalis, who revealed the melody spotlessly and
seriously, without exaggeration. And then the group, which had been
getting steadily better through the long concert, closed with a champion
version of "Lonely Woman." (All the fun and funk had restored them.)
They played some of it boldly and clearly, and then went into sketchier,
more microtonal areas, with Mr. Riley complicating and blurring his
groove; they kept the crescendo rising for minutes. The moral of the
story: Ornette Coleman is for everyone.