Ornette Coleman (1930–2015), American composer, altosaxophonist, also trumpet and violin
Harmolodics, Buckminster Fuller, Ornette and the piano, Ornette/Derrida on improvisation, History, Context/Influence
Harmolodics
The Coleman Quartet »didn‘t just take the roof of the Five Spot; they took the roof off the idea of the roof and left jazz exposed to the elements.«
(Geoff Dyer: »Torrential, Gut-bucket Jazz«, New York Review of Books Daily, www.nybooks.com, June 20, 2015, cited in Golia 2020, p. 272).
»Remove the caste system from sound«
Ornette developed the concept of »Harmolodics« that he defines as…
»…the use of physical and mental of one’s own logic made into an expression of sound to bring about the musical sensation of unison executed by a single person or with a group. Harmony, melody, speed, rhythm, time, and phrases all have equal position in the results that come from the placing and spacing of ideas. This is the motive and action of harmolodics.«
(Ornette Coleman: Prime Time for Harmolodics, Downbeat Magazine 1983, p. 54, cited after Mitchell, Reagan P.: Derrida, Coleman, and Improvisation, Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, Volume 32, Number 3, 2018, p. 2)
»Er sprach so wie er spielte, das heisst mitten im Satz fing ein neuer Satz an.«
»He spoke like he played, meaning in the middle of a sentence a new sentence would start.«
(Karl Berger über Ornette, Film »Music Mind« 15:50min)
From an interview with Karl Berger:
»He has a way of talking that is like harmolodic talk. He does exactly what he does in music. He’ll say a sentence, then he’ll use a word in the middle of the sentence to start another sentence, and do that two or three times in one sentence. So nobody understands at first what’s going on. He says everything he wants to say, but it’s sort of shortened. And that’s how he plays. He plays the same way.«
Ornette on Buckminster Fuller: »He is probably my best hero«
American composer and saxophonist Ornette Coleman recalls meeting American designer Buckminster Fuller. Ornette developed the concept of Harmolodics, Bucky articulated an Anticipatory Comprehensive Design Science. This is where they both meet (sorry for poor video quality, filmed from TV). A geodesic dome designed by Bucky was build in Fort Worth, Texas, Ornette‘s home town and Ornette played for its inauguration (see film about Ornette »Made in America«).
(quoted from film: »Made in America«, Director Shirley Clarke 1985, transcribed to the best of my ability)
»Well, actually I met Buckminster Fuller in 1950, about 1954 at Hollywood High in Hollywood California. I listened to his lectures and I was just inspired. In fact I once studied architect… I thought I was gonna be an architect, then I tought I was gonna be a brain specialist, then I thought… I wanted to be so many things, so I finally realized that I didn‘t have enough money to support any of these ideas so I decided I would pursue my career imitating music. So I got a horn and started playing to whatever I heard on the radio.
One thing that really just blew me away was his demonstration of his own domes. When he demonstrated the way his domes are put together and how geometric they were done it just blew me away because I said »This is how I was writing music. This is the way I write music.« I was in Rome and on my way to Florence to play a concert and I heared that he had passed so I dedicated my program to him. To me he surpassed all of the … that has to do with surviving because of ability or skills. And to me he became one of my… he is probably my best hero.«
»Fuller said that there is no such thing as up and down. There is only ›out‹. That was the first time I was touched aesthetically by a scientist… When Fuller illustrated his geodesic dome concept, I saw that we were brothers.«
(Ornette Coleman in Michael Zwerin »Breaking the Sound Barriers of Jazz«, International Herald Tribune (Paris), Nov. 7th, 1984, cited in Golia 2020, p. 222)
Here is another link to science:
»Theoretical physicist and saxophonist Stephon Alexander studied with Ornette, and his book ›The Jazz of Physics (2016)‹, partly inspired by their conversations, underscores the roles of intuition and improvisation in scientific discovery.«
(Golia 2020, p. 264)
Ornette’s albums »Opening the Caravan of Dreams» and »Prime Design/Time Design« (1985) show the Bucky Dome in Fort Worth, Texas.
»A harmolodic composition for four string instruments and percussion in honor of Buckminster Fuller«, click picture for sound on YouTube
Ornette Coleman and Prime Time at the Caravan of Dreams in 1985, created: 1985, updated: 2015-08-07 11:52:2Liense: CC BY 2.0 usage terms: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0, Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/seat850/3897943915/ | Craig Howell, original Dimensions: 3328×2047, view original file
»Harmolodics Anonymous« and Black Rock
Under this label coined by Bern Nix (guitar in Primetime, cited in Maria Golia 2020, p. 270), a large group of musicians can be assembled: Ornette‘s sidemen and later bandleaders such as James Blood Ulmer, Jamaladeen Tacuma, Charlie Haden and Ronald Shannon Jackon as well as players from the New York art and music scene that joined Ornette on different occasions and name him as an influence such as John Zorn, Pattie Smith, Laurie Anderson, Yoko Ono, Bill Laswell, Kieran Hebden, Carla Bley, Bill Frisell, Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Nels Cline (Wilco), and Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers). James Blood Ulmer together with Vernon Reid and Living Color startet the ›Black Rock‹ movement with seminal albums in the early 1980s.
Ornette and the piano
As a piano player, Peter takes special interest in Ornette‘s relation to the piano. His classic quartet with Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, Billy Higgins/Ed Blackwell didn‘t use a piano (with the exception of Walter Norris on »Something Else!!!!« 1958). Karl Berger explained that Ornette thinks in horizontal musical lines, not in vertical harmonics. However, in his Prime Time Band he uses guitars. James Blood Ulmer gave an introduction to »The unwritten Theory of Guitar Harmolodics«).
Listen to Ornette playing the piano, click on screenshot.
To Peter‘s surprise he recently discoverd a recording of Ornette playing a solo performance on piano and saxophone (Berliner Jazzdays 1972). He demonstrated an individual style exploring the piano in a way he also uses when playing the violin or the trumpet.
From the liner notes of Joachim Kühn: Melodic Ornette Coleman, Piano Works XII on Label ACT:
»Between 1995 and 2000 I was able to play sixteen concerts with Ornette. Before each concert he would write ten new pieces that we would work out and record during an entire week at his Harmolodic studio in Harlem, New York. Since he wanted me to contribute the chords (sounds) for his melodies, I was directly involved in the composition process. Once the concert was over, the songs would never be played again.
I am ow the only one who has all of the recordings and the sheet music for a total of 170 pieces. And after about twenty years, I have put together the most beautiful of his melodies and ballads and recorded them for piano solo. With the exception of »Lonely Woman«, none of the pieces has ever been released by Ornette.«
Joachim Kühn, Ibiza, 11. September 2018
also see Interview in German
The 1996 duo performance of Ornette and Joachim Kühn in Leipzig was released as »Colors« on Ornette’s label »Harmolodic«.
In 2007 pianist Aki Takase and saxophonist Silke Eberhard recorded duo versions of 33 classical Ornette compositions.
Ornette and french Philosopher Jacques Derrida discuss improvisation
Derrida expanded the concept of language and claims that the written word is stronger than the improvised spoken line. Here he meets with Ornette who, despite of being a famous jazz improviser, claims that written musical compositions better serve his intentions as descibed in the concept of Harmolodics.
click text to download
Jacques Derrida on Improvisation: Play–the first name
click text to download
History
Impressions of a press preview organised to promote Ornette’s first appearance at Yew Yorks’s Five Spot Café, from Downbeat, January 7th 1960, p.4 0
Context, Influence
External Content
Link: https://youtu.be/QugUkEg-B2Y?si=5zIT3ZF-RQNDp1Vj
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2009, Testimonials by Mike, Patten, Flea, Moby, Yoko Ono, Robert Wyatt, Vernon Reid, David Murray, Bobby McFerrin, Carla Bley, James Blood Ulmer, and others
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Link: https://youtu.be/ApeAGmpnwuM?si=HjV8mAydTujZo-G9
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Recommended Viewing/Reading
DVDs: »Ornette: Made in America (1985)«, »Looking for Ornette« (2017)
Books