Jerry Jacobsen's Collection
Ornette Coleman Three Bass Quintet 08/19/2007
Jazz Middelheim 2007, Park Den Brandt, Antwerpen, Belgium
| Source | Digital Satellite Broadcast |
| Media | CD-R 1 disc |
| Notes | 1) 0:33 (announcement) 2) 3:41 Following the Sound 3) 8:17 Sleep Talking 4) 4:08 Jordan 5) 7:41 911 (?) 6) 4:21 Call to Duty 7) 4:08 Turnaround 8) 5:16 Bach Prelude 9) 6:15 Those That Know Before it Happens (?) 10) 3:24 Taking the Cure (?) 11) 5:49 The Good Life 12) 7:46 New York 13)10:12 Song X 14) 6:18 Lonely Woman |
| J-Card Comment | Notes with recording: "Most miraculous to me about this performance was that it made music mysterious again. How did they decide to begin and end? Why the trumpet, now, the violin, later? How was the inscrutable relationship between alto and the rest determined? With his spoken introduction, Coleman offered a seemingly simple answer to all these questions, and others besides: "If you follow the sound, we'll all be in the same room." The three bassists mostly kept themselves out of each other's timbral range (Falanga and Moffett swapping bowing duties, Moffett judiciously applying Milesian wah-wah pedal as Coleman played trumpet, McDowell chording in the upper register), but three improvising bassists is never going to be easy for the listener to follow, so perhaps Denardo's steady, but not unsubtle, pummeling is meant to act as a counterweight to that tangled complexity. The habitual (though always spine-tingling) encore performance of "Lonely Woman" (no improvisation, just an interpretation of a melody well-suited to a bass-heavy setting, as the original recording already featured that amazing bass thrum) highlighted a second outstanding aspect of Coleman's mysterious music-making. His tone and melodic playing have a conservative beauty that is startling in the context of the rough and tumble of Denardo's high-octane drums and the three-bass mêlée. I once read somewhere that Coleman was unhappy with the way the classic Atlantic quartet albums were mixed, because he wanted the instruments to be more equal in the mix. Here, though, it is difficult not to hear him as above the fray, even as he pushes and pulls against it. It is often said that musicians mellow as they get older, but I wonder if it is not rather that they are rid of all extraneous elements. Everything Coleman played sounded essential, in any case. The crowd roared. "The Good Life" was included in the set-list (along with a Bach prelude that drew some laughter and some stuff from Sound Grammar). How could you not love this tune, even though the tumbling section in the middle was absent from this rendition?" |
| Trades Allowed | Yes |
| Ratings | Sound: A+ |
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Owned by Jerry Jacobsen
· Last Updated May 23, 2023
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