5:19 p.m. - 2008-09-07
Jazz Festival, Part II: Electric Jazzaloo
Eight Bold Souls is a Chicago-based aggregate consisting of eight, count them, eight musicians. There's a drummer, a bassist, a cellist, a trombonist, a trumpetario, a tubist, and two reedmen. Playing the insufferable know-it-all, I leaned over to Kia when they assembled onstage and remarked, "The cello lady must be Diedre Murry, you know, from the old Threadgill sextett." This turned out to be wrong. The cello-playing Bold Soul is named Naomi Millender. To my surprise and delight, Chicago is apparently jam-packed with matronly cello ladies who play with large, AACM-style bands. We'd heard them play a couple years ago, and marvelled at their large sound and wiley improvisations. At the jazz festival, they provided an effective counterpoint to the often frenetic Europeanisms of the previous band's set.
In my experience, the music of Chicago is unique, characterized by a rough-hewn, dark sound, wide beats within the ensemble, and a relaxed and assured time feel no matter what the tempo. Lots of music writers have noted this, that the expansive Chicago sound echoes the sprawling urban landscape surrounded by the vast prairie, the jazzman's wail reverberating within the canyon of skyscrapers and strife and bla bla bla bla bla. Hard working, blue collar bla bla. Whatever the origin of the Chicago sound, it's easily recognizable and Eight Bold Souls does it with the best of them. Because of the instrumentation, their sound is quite bottom-heavy. Because of all the horns, they can convincingly cover a lot of stylistic ground: be-bop, free, free-bop, New Orleans, "funky" music. And no chording instruments, because who needs those anyway? Not the souls who are bold.
Their set was varied, but at the same time moored by their big-bottomed rhythm section. The trombonist was the band goofball, a role he performed with aplomb. Each member played enjoyable improvisations...with one caveat! Both reed guys played lots of good saxophone, but not so much good clarinet. One played a b flat, the other an alto. They were consistently out of tune and when either of them were playing, I became distracted, wondering if they were emulating Eric Dolphy as the source of their questionable intonation, or were they just way better sax players than clarinetists? Whatever, it was an enjoyable performance, enhanced further, for a couple of numbers, by the lovely Dee Alexander, a vocal stylist who likes to make her voice sound like different instruments. Only she does it really well and it doesn't seem gimmicky. She wore a grandly collared golden gown that made her look like the Queen of Jazzlandia. Maybe she IS the Queen of Jazzlandia. Or at least Prime Minister.
After Eight Bold Souls played, there was a break, and then Denardo Coleman would play. The anticipation was palpable. The jazz festival grounds were crowdening. Night was falling. Soon, Denardo. How would we respond? How would we keep our emotions in check? How come the older, granola-looking lady three seats to my left kept telling passing seat-seekers that the seat on her right was occupied when it really just had her backpack sitting on it and she clearly had no human companion? Was she a crazy misanthrope, or just a regular Chicagoan? Either way, it's pretty depressing that people who like to listen to good music could also be ungenerous on such a basic level. In a similar vein, a lot of nazis were apparently big fans of Beethoven. You'd like to think that listening to good music makes people better, but no. Still, good music is good music. Plus, who knows, maybe buffer-zone-granola-lady would be an even bigger sociopath if there were no jazz festivals. Kia and I were glad to be at the jazz festival.
Eventually, Ornette Coleman's band took the stage. There was a lengthy standing ovation. After the ovation died down, there were still a bunch of audience members standing up, taking pictures, taking in the Coleman magic, etc. This led to calls of "UP FRONT!" from some cocertgoers behind us. I was thrilled! I've only heard people yell "UP FRONT!" on TV and in movies. So, anyway, then the band started. They were four: Ornette, two bassists, acoustic and electric, and of course Denardo. All day I'd been wondering: what will they do? Probably new stuff? Maybe? Does he still play stuff like "The Sphinx" and "Lonely Woman"? Or is it all Prime Time stuff now? Or something totally different? The answer: Yes. To every question. As far as I could tell. At this juncture I should probably own up to my shamefully spotty Ornette Coleman scholarship. I'm reasonably familiar with his early sixties output and I have "Song X" on compact disc. I don't know the titles of most of his tunes, but when I hear one, I recognize it as "that one Ornette tune". I've heard a little bit of Prime Time. His career was controversial at times. He's from Fort Worth, Texas. He's a music genius.
As far as I could tell, the first couple of tunes were the afore-mentioned sixties Ornette tunes that sound familiar but that I couldn't identify by name. The endings were really tight and abrupt, eliciting peals of delight from the jazz festival crowd. The acoustic bassist played jazz walking lines, while the electric bassist played a lot of guitar-style jazz chords, rhythmically punctuating the melodies and solos. Ornette sounded pretty much exactly like Ornette on the records: fun, unpredictable, and occasionally punctuated by trumpet and violin.
And now, on to Ornette Coleman's infamous trumpet and violin playing: I sort of enjoyed Ornette's trumpet and violin playing. He's obviously a sax player, not a violinist or trumpeter. Surely the man himself is aware of this. All the important melodic and improvisatory material, the "heavy lifting" if you will, was performed on the alto. But in between soloing and melodifying, Ornette would occasionally pick up the trumpet for spare, rhythmical punctuation. Or the violin, for ethereal texture, to accompany one of the bassist's solos or whatever was going on. He never spent an inordinate amount of time on the secondary instruments, and they were therefore THAT MUCH MORE EFFECTIVE. I'm a percussionist, so I speak with some authority in these matters.
Meanwhile: Denardo. Denardo.
NEXT: Jazz Festival, Part III, Digital Jazzaloo
