Reasons to be cheerful: Wynton books Ornette

Wynton Marsalis has high regard for the music of Ornette Coleman — as demonstrated by Jazz at Lincoln Center’s just-released 2009-2010 concert schedule, which begins next September 26 with a single performance by Coleman’s quartet featuring two bassists and his son Denardo on drums.

This booking might seem like a point of departure for JALC, which has a reputation for being tradition- rather than innovation-minded, but it really isn’t. The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra performed its members’ original arrangements of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Coleman’s music in January 2004. Here’s Wynton soloing on Ornette’s tune “Free” from an LCJO concert in Salt Lake City:

Marsalis also played his trumpet at a smaller Coleman-celebratory (but non-JALC) concert in 2004 at New York’s Merkin Hall in a manner proving he fully comprehends and can partake of the freedoms Coleman’s concepts encourage. He comes by his appreciation of Coleman from several directions. For one thing, his father pianist Ellis Marsalis was fascinated with Coleman’s iconoclastic music back in 1956, driving from New Orleans to Los Angeles with drummer Ed Blackwell, clarinetist Alvin Batiste and reedsman/composer/arranger/educator Harold Battiste to make Ornette’s acquaintance. That was before Coleman had recorded; Ellis Marsalis visited with him for two months. Ellis, Alvin Batiste and Ornette reunited at the 2003 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage festival.

Critics might suggest that Ornette Coleman’s iconoclasm is dated by the 50th anniversary this year of his breakthrough recording The Shape Of Jazz To Come, but in fact Ornette’s music instigates a permanent revolution. Jazz At Lincoln Center’s presumably “neo-conservative” orientation is based on remarks artistic director Wynton Marsalis made in the 1980s (documented in the interview with him included in my book Future Jazz) emphasizing a particular slice of jazz history and a resulting canon of jazz icons, as well as the inescapable tendencies towards institutionalization with which an establishment as large as Jazz At Lincoln Center must contend. As far as canons go, Ornette Coleman was inducted into JALC’s Nesuhi Ertegun Hall of Fame in November 2008.

The JALC concert season in the past couple of years has sought to amend its reputation with billings such as John Zorn’s Masada Quartet sharing a concert with Cecil Taylor’s trio; the 2009-2010 season also moves against type by including Maceo Parker, alto saxophonist renowned for his r&b-pop playing with James Brown, Ray Charles and P-Funk maestro George Clinton, and electric-keyboardist Russell Ferrante’s quartet Yellowjackets with electric guitarist Mike Stern. True, Zorn, Taylor, Maceo Parker, the Yellowjackets and Stern have been around a while. JALC makes no claims that it introduces unknown or cutting edge artists, but in the interests of inclusion, in 2009-2010 will present jazz interactions with reggae, Afro-Cuban music, tap dancing, rap, tango, gospel, the late Brazilian composer Moacir Santos and French-Italian accordionist Richard Galliano, as well as concerts based on the jazz-jazz music of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Fats Waller, Mary Lou Williams, pianist Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, hard bop and vocalists including Dianne Reeves, Kurt Elling and Manhattan Transfer with Jon Hendricks.

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