It ought to be clear to anyone visiting Ronnie Scott’s Club in the last few days that it is not possible to criticise the playing of Ornette Coleman. The act of criticism is necessarily connected with what the artist is supposed to be doing, and as I haven’t the remotest idea what Ornette Coleman is supposed to be doing all criticism is stilled. It remains only to report in factual terms what happens when he arrives on the bandstand.
Coleman begins with what might laughingly be called an alto saxophone solo at fast tempo, brief and to the point, lasting say 10 or 15 minutes, in the course of which both harmony and melody are given the brush. Next comes a change of mood, that is to say the same thing is played slow instead of fast. The violin interlude which follows is even more startling. Coleman staggers through some mysterious pattern of his own devising, sawing away with a ferocity which belies the dolorous expression on his face.
Finally there arrives what will probably come to be known in jazz history as Coleman’s Trumpet Involuntary, in which this unique artist plays a series of strangulated bugle calls and high chromatic runs with fine disregard for all present.
He is not however completely without shrewdness. By mastering the useful trick of playing the entire chromatic scale at any given moment, he has absolved himself from the charge of continuously wrong notes. Like a stopped clock, Coleman is right at least twice day.
To me the most remarkable thing of all is the sycophancy of his audiences, who sit in awed silence throughout each number, and then applaud like a barbarian horde hailing the fall of great city. Unquestionably Coleman is king of the avant-garde, but I cannot help wondering how many people have noticed he is wearing no clothes.
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