When you wander the streets of New York at night alone, every street urchin and clammy prostitute will eventually sidle up to you and relate some story about that wild year when he or she was an avant-garde jazz luminary. You just have to politely smile, pay for the dope, and explain that playing no music while living in total degradation is not avant-garde. The term "avant-garde" itself has slaughtered millions in its lifetime. It means absolutely nothing, and any review that uses it ought to be immediately ignored. Whether you're talking about Frank Zappa or the AACM, allegedly avant-garde music has always pretended to challenge hegemony, structure and foundation. And it's rarely succeeded because true liberation probably doesn't mean dressing like Bleep the Silver Robot or constructing labyrinthine geometrical diagrams to prove your music is as improvisational as you claim it is.
I feel bad saying it, but Ornette Coleman is among the handful of true avant-garde artists. He invented the goddamn garde using only an alto sax while everyone else was still in diapers toying around with modality. Though he was deemed a dangerous heretic throughout his career, he never expressly assailed tonality or tradition as some sort of macho athlete or vigilant revolutionary (despite his frequently apocalyptic album titles). He played as he felt. If his music required wading into harmonic or rhythmic conventions, so be it. Art should be about the subtleties and fluctuations of life, not formal constraints or attempts to repeal them. In proving his point, he released six of the greatest jazz albums of all time, starting with 1959's Twins and ending with 1961's Ornette on Tenor.
Ornette!, the penultimate album of Coleman's Atlantic era, came after 1960's Free Jazz, which had been the biggest leap in improvisation music since (at least) Kind of Blue and basically restructured the rest of modern music for the next several decades. A tough act to follow. Nevertheless, the attempt is certainly valiant: this permutation of the Quartet retains half of the performers from Free Jazz, with Don Cherry on trumpet, Scott LaFaro on bass, and Ed Blackwell on drums.
Split into four cuts, Ornette! doesn't begin as much as it thrusts you in mid-spiral. Coleman's reeling, rasping abrasion is already plaiting Cherry's whinnying lunges and half-drunk two-steps. Blackwell breaks down into simmering cymbals which become progressively more militant, seeming just a few steps removed from kneading funk. LeFaro's bass is anticipatory and ethereal at some points, eerie and alluring at others. His bass might as well be made of clay since every time he touches it, the tones harden and remain imprinted for the rest of the 16\xBD-minute song. By the end, these echoes and traces form elaborate riffs that sprawl below Coleman and Cherry's upper registers.
Although it was recorded only months before LeFaro's untimely death, "C&D;" features a bowed bass that's equally adept at frantic gypsy dervishes as it is at slumping, slinking subtlety. And even though this is supposed to be almost entirely improvisational music, "W.R.U."'s climax is deployed with such vigor that it's hard to believe Coleman wasn't bending the rules a bit: His alto grows increasingly violent and agitated, and then his breathing is restored, paced, elongated, and laced with some sort of orgasmic or epiphanic overtones.
Blackwell is typically a bit of an unreliable drummer, but at least on his solo, "T&T;", he delivers a meditative, dexterous African rhythm. Coleman and Cherry dangle around a cracked, low tone, smoothly segueing from taut frowns to gaping smiles. Though Blackwell is the most traditional of the four participants, he musters enough intentional awkwardness to leave drawling gaps and drowsy brushes all over the session outtake, "Proof Readers".
Throughout, Coleman is seductive and charming, sometimes venturing into brief moments that could pass as showtunes. Fortunately, there's always enough skronks to stave off monotony or mawkishness. Tones are preserved, whether fragile or booming, before being called off at the brink of shrillness. It's another impressive, comfortable record by someone who knows that racket extraordinarily well. It may not quite match the audacity and shock value of Free Jazz, but when you've just razed the scaffolds of structured music, it's probably as good as you're going to get.
