First of all, this is another great interview by Val Wilmer made some time after Ornette Coleman's famous August 1965 concert at the Fairfield Halls in Croydon, south London. Coleman also played there in April '1966 which could tie in with this interview.
The August '65 concert was recorded and released in 1967. It included a written piece, performed by the London Virtuoso Wind Ensemble, then a performance by the Coleman trio.
Of all the jazz writers during the 1960s, especially in Europe, Wilmer shines especially bright - and her photographs rank with the best from both sides of the Atlantic.
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| Ornette Coleman by Valerie Wilmer |
Ornette Coleman talks to Valerie Wilmer
ORNETTE COLEMAN leaned forward in his chair. He talked shyly, in quiet, slightly hesitant phrases, unable or unwilling to express himself eloquently, yet serious, and determined to communicate. It was hard to associate this gentle, mild-mannered man with the leading protagonist of the avant-garde jazz movenent, but this was the same iconoclast who turned the jazz world upside down nearly seven years ago with his unorthodox handling of the alto saxophone.
Ornette is friendly and easily accessible, and if his personality appears at variance with his emotionally charged music, it may be because he is a man strangely divorced from the world and its ways. He has no difficulty in being true to himself, and the question of doing or being otherwise just does not arise. His Croydon concert is now practically a legend, especially since he played there in defiance of Union ruling. But what is most significant is that although he apparently needed the money, Ornette's primary concern was to play the music he had promised the people.
Since that concert, Ornette has gone on to further successes on the Continent, including appearances at the Berlin and Lugano Jazz Festivals. He now makes his home in Europe and is currently appearing at the new Ronnie Scott Club. This interview was done shortly before he left London after his Fairfield Hall concert.
The saxophonist's formative rears were spent in his home town of Fort Worth Texas, and on the West Coast where he suffered innumerable rebuffs from fellow musicians who were unable or unwilling to decipher his message. Yet Coleman harbours no animosity towards them or his manv other detractors in the jazz fraternity. He honestly believes that his rejection stems from a feeling of insecurity aroused in other musicians when they hear a revolutionary approach to an established music, and feels that his unequivocal acceptance is just a matter of time.
IT WAS AROUND 1950 that I really started getting into this way of playing. That was as a result of playing bebop music for a long time. I always would get very tired of repeating myself at the same point just in order to start a new chorus of music, so I started trying to go beyond that and found that I wasn't getting too good a response from other musicians. So I started studying to see exactly what I was doing and I finally discovered that I wasn't repeating chorus after chorus like you do in certain forms, and that I wasn't playing the changes in the order in which they occur to let other musicians know where you are.
After I realised that was my main problem, I started to make it into something that was more valid for myself. I couldn't get jobs— in fact I stopped trying to get jobs or to sit in with other musicians. It was very frustrating, very uncomfortable, but I wouldn't change the way I'd play. I would wait until I got a chance to get a job for myself, playing myself. But a job consists or someone listening to you play and someone paying you for having them listen, and that's not too easy to get. Someone's got to like what you're doing or else think that they can make some money from it. The basic problem is who's paying you and how much. But I guess that’s the same in any field.
I never consciously tried to play the way I am playing now until I got turned away from playing with other musicians. I never really thought about it, but it has turned out to be very helpful musically—if not financially. But I never was a financial success, you know, even when I was playing straight.
Coleman's music emraces a wide range of influences. Basically it stems from the blues and his initial grounding in r-and-b groups is apparent in half the things he plavs. There's a strong Countrv and Western flavour, too, as you'd expect in a a man the Lone Star State. And a dash of nearbv Mexico. Although he listened extensively to local musicians in Fort Worth, he accepted no direct influences and appears to have gone his own way more or less since the beginning.
I JUST LOVED to play all different kinds or music and to listen to other people playing music well. When you hear me you probably hear everything I've heard since from when I was a kid. In fact, it’s a glorified folk music. I just play whatever comes into my head that I think that I can manipulate with a sincere and honest feeling.
My music is different from conventional jazz in the phrasing, the manner of bars and the choice of the rhythm. In the different forms of jazz that have been and are being played, the phrasing becomes the way it is because of the manner of bars that you have to play to get a certain sound out of a composition. The notes are the same in all music. I imagine what I'm doing is a combination of all the keys. It comes very easy if you know music. I don't know how well I know music but I know it well enough to do what I'm doing. And then if you know your instrument well enough to do what you know musically, it's not that hard. But you have to have some idea of music or a very good ear to play consistently what you feel and have it to sound with a professional ardour.
Although Coleman's music stems basically from a rejection of established factors such as bar-lines, set keys and chords, he usually writes down an initial framework. To what extent his tunes are composed and where the composer's role ends and the instrumentalist takes over, he explained:
I WRITE in the sense of having a composition that can be played as a total unity with a group and yet allow the musicians to express their own feelings about it. If I am writing a piece of music down and if I'm playing what I have written, the choice of when I become more the instrumentalist is left to me. If you were talking about a particular piece of music I could tell you, but it's really all the same to me.
Quite a few composers like Gunther Schuller and Leonard Bernstein have expressed an interest in what I'm doing. But then of course I'm a composer, and a composer is a composer no matter what you're doing. I would rather see myself as an instrumentalist but I do find myself very interested in composition. But I play lots of tunes, some by other composers, and I will play any tune that will allow me to embellish it or superimpose certain ideas. If it's interesting to play I'll play it. I would choose a song that had a statement which didn't necessarily have to be said over and over. Mostly any ballad you can do that with. If you're playing slow it automatically allows you more freedom.
In spite of his emphasis on 'freedom', Ornette enjoys rehearsing as often as possible. Currently he leads the spectacular bassist, David Izenzon, and his drummer is Charles Moffett. He considers this the most satisfactory combination for him to work with at the moment.
I HAVEN'T HAD as much time to rehearse as I would like to recently. I usually rehearse the total sound of the piece and the total resources of the group individuality to establish the point of departure and the sound. I just rehearse the total performance of something to the point where if the person doesn't remember what he did the last time, he still knows what was there at the beginning.
I've tried not rehearsing, what I call 'creative composition', and it was very frightening. But nine times out of ten it has worked. You play a tune that you never have played before, and what happens when I play something creatively without rehearsing it is that no-one would ever know what was the end until I'd completely stop. And then I might just stop because I had another phrase in my mind. So it is hard to do but it's freer.
I think that complete freedom would be just thinking, not playing at all. It's like a guy was telling me about Christ. He said, you know I don't believe in Christ because I've never seen him. And I was telling him that's what's beautiful—you never seen him but you know he existed. So complete freedom would be like that to me, something you know exists but that you know you could never achieve.
I try to play without having to call upon any other ideas other than just what is present. It's very hard to do because the guy who's playing with you has to be very sensitive and expressive so that it comes off professionally, and doesn't just sound like you're doing something out of the air.
A number of important figures on the avant-garde front were nurtured in the Coleman cradle, among them Don Cherry and the superlative bassist Charlie Haden, yet the saxophonist declares that none of their influence rubbed off on him.
I HAVE HAD some very good sidemen, though, very good guys. They all have made beautiful music with me. I haven't not accepted an influence that I could have derived from the guys who have played with me, though there are times when someone would play something I'd get an idea from. But it would be a musical idea, not a conception. The conception of something and the inspiration are two different things. I'm still waiting to hear something really new from anyone else.
Gradually, in Europe at least, Ornette is finding the acceptance that has eluded him for so long. His name has become respected in American jazz circles, too, and when he returned to active playing a year ago after a two year spell in the woodshed, his three week engagement at New York's Village Vanguard was a standing-room-only affair. Nevertheless, he appears somewhat disenchanted with America and claims to have turned down several substantial offers in order to try his luck in Europe. He is writing a lot—an impressionistic work of his was performed by a chamber-music group at Croydon—and feels that his playing has changed considerably over the past couple of years.
But that's only because I've grown. There's a difference between growing and changing. And then you don't know what the depth of growing is.
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| Photo by Valerie Wilmer |
MUSICIANS NOW seen to be very receptive socially, but to some I'm still just a conversation piece, someone to talk about. I feel that they often put me down and try to find some technical reason why what I'm doing is not valid from their way of thinking. But I don't disagree with whatever they're feeling, what they say or how they think it should be. I'm happy about the way my music situation is. I'll be more happy when I have less financial problems to worry about, but I guess that will come in the future. I'm pretty contented to keep growing.
For the past four years, the saxophonist has operated without any kind of booking agent. Consequently, the gigs have been few and far between for he has nothing of the hustler in his make-up. Naive he may be too, but he is dedicated to his art to an almost frightening degree. And that is a welcome rarity. He summed up:
I am more interested in doing a job well that I know I can do than playing down to the audience mentality or above it. I don't like to think that I am designing music for a certain people's mentality, though most of the music that's played today is designed like that.
But I don't ever think I'm playing for myself, I think I'm always playing for people. I would really love just to keep this band together and strengthen myself musically and naturally, socially, in the sense of giving people some sort of audible pleasure. And continue to grow. That's about it.
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