The season for creative music opened with several roars: Ornette Coleman triumphed at Jazz at Lincoln Center – Postive Catastrophe at the New Languages Festival was an absolute delight — Los Angeles trumpeter Bobby Bradford lead an ace quintet at the Festival of New Trumpets at the Jazz Standard — and those are only the gigs I […]
Best American city for jazz? Chicago
I’m a Chicago homie — long removed but never really gone — so don’t expect objectivity, but a recent visit proved my native metropolis is #1 in America and maybe everywhere for its active, creative, meaningful, almost-economically-viable, neighborhood-rooted, exploratory and world class jazz. I say this even as my dearly adopted New York City kickstarts as […]
Today’s the day NYC goes beyond jazz
On September 17,New York kicks off a fall season more highly charged with new creative energies than any in memory. An army of mostly young, skilled, ambitious and devoted musicians is making itself heard in the East Village, Soho, Brooklyn, on the Lower West Side and in the clubs — while benevolence is cast by the first […]
best review ever of Miles Ornette Cecil — Jazz Beyond Jazz
I’m humbled by writer-poet-performance artist Kirpal Gordon‘s appreciation of and insight into my book on the avant garde through the models of Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, in the just-posted NOLA issue of Big Bridge magazine. He’s captured my intent and says I accomplished what I meant to. See if you agree.  howardmandel.com […]
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, […]
Mostly Other People’s killer liner notes
Mostly Other People Do The Killing is a super-serious-with-a-sense-of-humor Philadelphia-based  quartet paying homage to Ornette Coleman with its hot new album This Is Our Moosic.The cd’s cover photo cops and mocks the oh-so-cool look of Coleman’s earth-shaking quartet on its classic 1960 release This Is Our Music  — but more impressive is the young band’s music, which in […]
Colbert & Coleman: Name that tune
A reader asks: “Could you please post the name of the [Ornette] Coleman song sampled for that sketch” on Steven Colbert’s Comedy Central show of October 9? Colbert pulled one of his trademark reverses, ridiculing the vast emptiness of smug superiority by goofing on a 10-second snatch of the Pulitzer Prize-winning musician’s live recording Sound Grammar. […]
Colbert’s tin ear
Steven Colbert plays a pointed dance on the funny-bone, but misled his “nation” unintentionally at least once  last night in the segment “Who’s Not Honoring Me Now.” At 12 minutes into the show, he sniffed at the MacArthur Foundation’s award of a $500,000 fellowship to saxophonist Miguel Zenon, tongue-in-cheeking “Never give money to a jazz musician — they’ll […]
Chicago hears Ornette Coleman — This is our music
An estimated 20,000 to 30,000 listeners of all ages, genders, races, religions — Americans and visitors from abroad, too — enjoyed the directly expressive, highly personalized music of Pulitzer Prize-winner Ornette Coleman as the finale of the outdoor Chicago Jazz Festival last Sunday night. The attentive, mellow and celebratory audience response, including a standing ovation […]