Ornette Coleman - RIP

[Hardbopjazz]

_{What a major loss. RIP Ornette. Thanks for all the music.}

[BeBop]

Sad. Thankful. Sad. Thankful.

RIP

[king ubu]

Oh shit, this hurts. Big time.

Will play "Lonely Woman" when I'll be home tonight. Very, very sad.

[Late]

Before he was an icon, he was an object of ridicule ...

Important point — and the same can be said, probably not coincidentally, of a number of creative icons. Equally important to the music he made, is his power of perseverance — to keep going in the face of that one repeated word: No.

[GA Russell]

RIP.

https://www.bing.com/search?q=Ornette+Coleman&filters=tnTID%3a%22F2086C03-DC55-4748-BF4A-F81D6EE8BCC4%22+tnVersion%3a%22933852%22+segment%3a%22popularnow.carousel%22+tnCol%3a%2211%22+tnOrder%3a%221c540195-f270-4b18-ad19-16222e438513%22&FORM=BSPN01&crslsl=1135&efirst=8

[sonnyhill]

WKCR is doing a memorial broadcast for 24 hours.

WKCR's memorial broadcast will be continuous until next Wednesday 6/17/2015 at 9:30 a.m.

[jeffcrom]

This is a tough one. RIP, OC.

[RogerF]

A day you know will come but can never prepare for. We lived in a different world before Ornette and now we live in a different one without him again. If ever a musician deserved out utmost thanks, it is him. My gratitude is bottomless.

Well said.

RIP.

Amen to that, RIP Ornette

[xybert]

Paying my respects. What an amazing man. It strikes me as utterly miraculous that we've been able to enjoy his music. Things could have been different. His music will be 'making me feel better' until the day i die. RIP.

Edited June 11, 2015 by xybert

[ep1str0phy]

My Facebook feed is flooded with obituaries, and I’m reminded of the role Ornette Coleman’s music has played in the shaping and liberation of so much culture. The filaments of the 21st century are suffused with his aesthetic. There are themes and notions in Ornette’s music that would be relevant in any era: freedom, communication, coexistence, agency, authority (and the deconstruction of hierarchy), and so on. It’s mind-boggling to consider that for every great album issued under his name--and for every concert he played--there are thousands of artists whose whose work is charged by the atom of harmolodics.

John Coltrane recorded with Ornette’s rhythm section. Dolphy edged closer to his mature music in commune with early free jazz. Roscoe Mitchell made his first “big” statement on an album that opened with a tune called “Ornette.” The musics of Miles, Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins, and other “pre-free” figureheads were upended by Ornette’s innovations. Early harmolodic music presaged the innovations of Albert Ayler, the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, and AMM, and Ornette was part of the genetics of punk rock. Pop culture iconology from Lou Reed to Patti Smith to Yoko Ono owes obvious (and sometimes direct) debt to Ornette’s music. And this is the famous stuff-

I (like many others) will probably be listening to the classics over the course of the next few days: The Shape of Jazz to Come, Crisis, Science Fiction, and so on. The microcosmic universe that Ornette cultivated with the likes of Cherry, Haden, Higgins, and Blackwell (all dearly departed, now each his own undeniable and monumental influence) is as much a triumph of genuine ingenuity and experimentation as it is (post hoc) a victory for innovation and the American spirit of individuality.

The Ornette that has played the greatest role in my life, however, is the marginal one. I didn’t know him as a person and received the gift of his music decades after the initial flush of fury and awe--but listen to the wiry and chaotic violinist/trumpeter on “Snowflakes and Sunshine” (Live at the Golden Circle Vol. 2), the man who enabled and emboldened a 10 year old drummer on The Empty Foxhole, the daring and maybe even overbold auteur of Skies of America and Tone Dialing. Like the entreaties of some parallel universe life coach, Ornette’s musical life was an invitation (for many, like me, a dictum): ”don’t play like me, don’t live like this, do your own thing.”

So today, and ever day after this, I’ll play my own shit. I’ll do my best to foster creativity in my friends, peers, students, and (even? hopefully?) my elders. I’ll make it out to shows, and I’ll let people know when there’s some “cool new music” happening. I’ll work hard at perfecting my craft, but I’ll make room for life, inquiry, and the invention of change. Maybe I’ll go left, but if I do it three times, I’ll be going right, too.

To paraphrase Hendrix, Ornette was the first ray of a new rising sun. We are the change of the century. We are the shape of jazz to come.

Edited June 11, 2015 by ep1str0phy

[johnblitweiler]

A day you know will come but can never prepare for. We lived in a different world before Ornette and now we live in a different one without him again. If ever a musician deserved out utmost thanks, it is him. My gratitude is bottomless.

This is so true. We've been so lucky to live in the midst of his creations and we're now entering the post-Ornette era.

[johnblitweiler]

Richard Williams said it well in The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2015/jun/11/ornette-coleman-ourage-and-rightness :

From hand to hand, the torch of jazz was passed until, at the end of a long line of publicly recognised hero-figures that had begun with Louis Armstrong, it reached Ornette Coleman. He was not where jazz finished, by any means. The music’s evolution continued by different means. But he was the last surviving great soloist whose playing, by itself, marked a major step in the music’s evolution, and defined an entire era.

[JSngry]

First Ornette I ever heard - the "Una Muy Bonita" Atlantic 45. To this day, I still hear the fades when hearing that tune.

First time I realized how upsetting Ornette could be - buying Free Jazz in Louisville in 1971 while there on a summer vacation visiting one of Dad's old Army buddies, who had kids about my same age who were also into music, and who was all "hey Jim, let's hear that record you bought, I bet it's some far out stuff!"

First Ornette record that really grabbed me by the real-time balls and made me get a band together RIGHT NOW to play music like THIS - Dancing In Your Head.

First Ornette record that nudged me into finally accepting what I already knew about how music was going to "work" in the digital age - Tone Dialing.

It's not enough for a prophet to guess right. That's not a prophet, that's just a lucky son of a bitch. A prophet has to get it right and have it be proven right, not by force of will, but by the irresistible forces of inevitability. There ya' go, that was Ornette. IS Ornette.

A freakin' Atlantic 45. How many lives have been changed by some kind of an Atlantic 45?

[romualdo]

What a shock!!

RIP Ornette

[Mark Stryker]

For folks who might be interested, here's a 2004 profile that I wrote that we reposted today. http://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/music/2015/06/11/ornette-coleman-profile/71066180/

There was also a sidebar about a remarkable turn during the interview when Ornette gave me his alto to play and gave me a harmolodics lesson. We didn't repost that one but I've put it on my Facebook page. Here's a link: https://www.facebook.com/mark.stryker.35/posts/491860824312091?comment_id=491913590973481&offset=0&total_comments=4&notif_t=feed_comment

[paul secor]

For folks who might be interested, here's a 2004 profile that I wrote that we reposted today. http://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/music/2015/06/11/ornette-coleman-profile/71066180/

There was also a sidebar about a remarkable turn during the interview when Ornette gave me his alto to play and gave me a harmolodics lesson. We didn't repost that one but I've put it on my Facebook page. Here's a link: https://www.facebook.com/mark.stryker.35/posts/491860824312091?comment_id=491913590973481&offset=0&total_comments=4&notif_t=feed_comment

Great and very telling story, Mark.

[LWayne]

Still processing this news. What a shocker. One of the truly influential-and controversial-musicians in jazz and modern music.

RIP to a man who challenged and changed the rules.

You will be missed.

LWayne

[Adam]

I'm just sad about this. I'll miss him. And what everyone else has already said.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

im so sorry, RIP

[niels]

RIP Mr. Coleman, truly one of the biggest legends in Jazz.

[mikeweil]

R.I.P.

Was there a free jazz pioneer with a similar unique melodic approach, whose tunes (that's what they really are) are played by someone like Metheny?

[bluesoul]

Richard Brody in the New Yorker

[Milestones]

RIP for Ornette, a towering innovator.

[Milestones]

I get the impression that Orentte was most valued in NYC. Of course, that is the jazz capital.

[Joe]

Ornette is easily in my list of Top 5 All-time Texans.

Really, as an artist (if I might call myself such) I've drawn more inspiration from Ornette and the state's avant-jazz diaspora -- Tapscott, Carter, Bradford, Redman, Lasha, Shannon Jackson, etc. etc. -- than just about anyone else.

The dude was physically assaulted for what he had to express, and on more than one occasion. I don't know if that's worse than indifference or not. But he kept on, and on, and never wavered. He could be stubborn, yes, and ornery, by all accounts. What sometimes courage rubs people the wrong way. And, even at his most unassuming, Ornette never lacked for courage.