2:05 p.m. - 2008-09-03
Jazz Festival, Part I
We finally got to hear Denardo Coleman this weekend! As well as his saxophone playing father, who I'm told has also achieved some renown. Kia did some research last week and learned of a large jazz festival being held in Chicago over Labor Day weekend. Ornette Coleman (Denardo's father) was scheduled to headline the final evening. We decided to attend. Arrangements were made (by Kia, largely) and we set off in our car for The Windy-Shouldered City on Sunday morning, giving us plenty of time to hear Ornette Coleman and several preceding acts.
As we barrelled toward the City that is Adjacent to the Lake, I wondered what to expect. Thanks to a cursory glance at Wikipedia, I had learned a little bit about Ornette Coleman. His resume is lengthy and impressive. In addition to performing on the soundtrack for the film version of "Naked Lunch", he composed an orchestral work called "Skies of America", which was recorded by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Also, he had apparently made something of a splash in the nineteen-fifties and sixties with his "free" approach and plastic saxophone. But what does Ornette Coleman sound like NOW, we wondered? More important, will Denardo be manning the drums?
"Will Denardo be on the drums?" I asked as we breezed through the flatlands.
"Who?" replied Kia.
We arrived in the City of Melted Cheese with plenty of time to spare and headed downtown. On the way, we noted all the great landmarks: the really tall building you can see from really far away, the other really tall building, the Hard Rock Cafe, the convenient surface lot where we could park overnight. Kia had gotten us a room overnight where, exhausted from hours of exposure to jazz, we could find repose. Our room was at the Essex hotel. We went to check in. I remarked to Kia that I had once stayed at this hotel, long ago when our arts high school percussion ensemble had played in Chicago. Kia remarked that she had had a similar experience with her youth orchestra, also while in high school. It was becoming apparent that we had painfully similar backgrounds. After waiting around a while, we finally got to go to our room. To steel ourselves for all the jazz, we rested.
Later, having refreshed ourselves, we headed for the jazz festival. It was being held in a vast park by the lake. The park, originally conceived as a holding area for errant hippies, contained a large band shell. We found it and began looking for seats. At this point, it was two and a half hours before Ornette Coleman was scheduled to play and there were plenty of empty seats, most of them in the hot, hot sun. We found a couple that were near an aisle and, knowing that seats would soon become a scarce commodity, dug in.
The first band we heard was a group of Dutch musicians under the name Instant Composition Ensemble (or ICE!) or some such thing. There were about ten of them. Maybe eleven. I had heard of three of them: Misha Mengelberg, Han Bennik and Michael Moore. They alternated free, bold Europrovisations with hokey swing numbers. Also, the violinist lady played a bunch of Bartok shit. I was impressed by Han Bennik: he's good at making with the crazy, as I expected, but he can also play very clean and swinging when he wants to, and can go back and forth seamlessly. Also, he has the air of the fun-loving goofball about him.
Kia and I both enjoyed the Dutch band...with caveats! First, one of the reed players was wearing a little Lester Young hat. Really?? Still???? Still with the porkpie hat? Have you not heard that one song, "Goodbye Porkpie Hat"? The title means "Enough with the porkpie hats and find your own style already". And caveat number two: they're called the Instant Composing Band or whatever, and yet each musician was reading music at various times. Someone had had to prepare this notated music beforehand. This strikes me as Premeditated Composition, not Instant Composition.
But these were minor quibbles. We were having a fine time at the jazz festival and looked forward to the jazz stylings of the next band, Eight Bold Souls.
