Ornette Coleman: obituary to the jazz musicians – SPIEGEL ONLINE

He said yes so quietly. Although he coined the term in 1960 a noisy species with a single album, “Free Jazz – A Collective Improvisation”. Two quartets played simultaneously. But in 1930 in Fort Worth, Texas, born and now deceased saxophonist was no force Meier.

Ironically, Ornette Coleman, who had the Jazz blasted the bonds, almost whispered in the conversation. Thus not it corresponded to the image of musical freedom fighter, who survived the Sixties and 2007 won a Grammy for lifetime achievement. A year earlier I met Coleman before a concert by 1 clock in the morning. His opening: “When did you last cry, Mister?” Two hours later, I would have said. “After your show, Sir”

When Coleman these days again listening very well, you will find the gentle man from the south again in music. In the theme songs of the early stage, he played with trumpeter Don Cherry as you want to lead a partnership: never congruent, but in magnetic spacer, always prancing

No heart beats the same. ” / b>

And in recent decades, as long there are several bass or drums on stage, the principle of unneurotic but binding love expands to the whole band. All playing for themselves, but no one alone. ears remain open. You will hear more bass lines. Several pulses, no heart beats the same. And always this tone Colemans: sad in Calypso, vorwärtschauend in the ballad. Usually both. When he would not only stand, but go. As he had learned when he was playing as a young musician rhythm and blues and had to go during the solos around the bar.

Perhaps it is now possible for a short time to rest the stereotype of free jazz as caterwauling. John Coltrane, the great tenor of jazz history, durschritt the harmony of jazz at breakneck speed, so they suffered to advance to intergalactic banks. For some, this was difficult to understand. Coleman but went the opposite way: it was geared to the Blues and the folk song. He let the piano away, because it is the narrowed it harmoniously, and took a young white bassist who had played at home in the family bluegrass, who died last year, Charlie Haden.

The albums for Atlantic Records at the end of Fünzigerjahre are still fascinating even for many who do not make their living with Jazz. “The Shape of Jazz to Come” (1959) with Don Cherry on trumpet, Charlie Haden on bass and Billy Higgins on drums is one of the masterpieces Colemans. As the mainstream jazz harmonic refinement ever conducted and the avant-garde like Miles, Coltrane and Thelonious Monk examined the abstract modernity, Coleman invented quartet an American folk, who combined the music of the West with the Jazz.

Star of New York bohemia in satin suits

The result: Jazz on the vast prairie. Now everything was open. “Change of the Century” was the successor, then “This is Our Music”, followed by: “free jazz”. Album titles like exclamation that should not lie. The first two: “Something Else !!!” and “Tomorrow is the Question!”. Questions were there to be answered.

It was John Lewis from the Modern Jazz Quartet, who advised on the major record label Atlantic in New York City Coleman. If someone was to elevator music at that time, then the MJQ. But Easy Listening can be deceptive, musical elegance betrays flair, style, hipness, this elusive attitudes of popular culture. Coleman was by his years in Los Angeles to star in the New York bohemia, we have often seen him in satin suits, writes the New York Times.

But he also lived in Künster lofts, which he and creative unofficial social centers rebuilt, in Soho and the Lower East Side than there was very uncomfortable – and in fact was even. Like the best hipster, enveloped also Coleman many of his utterances in a language that deliberately did not distinguish between civil and bullshit. His harmony system for example he cited for decades “harmolodics” to return to the melody, the permission that was forgotten in the great scale jazz. Longer talk about harmolodics, but soon leads to esoteric subjects. We saw Master smile this more often. Or?

One Coleman can from all sides approach

Coleman made his son Denardo play at the age of ten years on drums, angered many with his terrible violin playing. But again it was the philosopher among the jazz musicians in making non-academic music as possible. Free is free, or: stubborn in the openness. She has paid off, in the new millennium, he played not only good concerts, but has won both the Grammy for lifetime achievement even a Pulitzer Prize for the album “Sound Grammar”.

How wide was his influence on musicians, show two opposing fans: guitarist Pat Metheny and the alto saxophonist John Zorn. The fine Metheney recovered from his cuddly perfection by playing Colemans numbers and once with him recorded (“Song X”, 1986) an album. And the wild anger cooled be Mütchen in a wonderful series with the Masada Quartet, which was clearly inspired by Coleman’s bands of Atlantic-time. Coleman can be approached from all sides, and the best to do it again and again.

The economic aspect should not be forgotten when American Champion. I asked Coleman time in Montreux, the role played in the late fifties, the producers, with him so Nesuhi Ertegun, founder of Atlantic Records. Coleman, very quietly: “.. Nesuhi sought ways to multiply his fortune I do not want to detract from his performance, he was educated enough to work with those who profit promised I was one of those..” Mr. Coleman, Ertegun was also educated enough to give you artistic freedom? Coleman: “As long as he got the best out: Yes.”

The best thing is gone, the best is on record. On Tuesday 11 June died of heart failure at the age of 85 years Ornette Coleman in New York.