Ornette Coleman
Sound Grammar

A delightful, unexpected surprise, and a true gift for thousands of enthusiasts: in 2006, at seventy-six years of age, Ornette Coleman gives us one of his most beautiful albums ever. A handful of original compositions (the opening "Jordan" is already heart-stopping), plus the reinterpretation of some past classics, from the famous "Song X", to the successful revival of "Turnaround", a modified blues that, over forty years later, hasn't lost an ounce of its quirky splendor.

Ornette Coleman's music, in its most mature and accomplished form, simultaneously has two explosive and antithetical effects. First: it takes away from under your feet, without you even noticing, all the harmonic and rhythmic certainties not only of yours, but of all the generations of listeners before you. Second: it grabs your hand and immerses you in an unstoppable flow of energy, capable of embracing the entire spectrum of human emotion. The magic, which forever consigns this author to the annals of music history, is that of making these two antithetical aspects coexist in a poetic, all-encompassing homogeneity.

Listening to this, like many other Ornette records, can resemble those moments of involuntary trance that each of us experiences daily. Like when you're searching for your house keys and only realize they're in your pocket after sticking your hand in for the thousandth time. Or, after a short highway trip, you find yourself at the exit toll without remembering anything but the start of the journey.

The beginning of the journey in this music is well known; but soon you find yourself in exotic, seductive, and completely unexplored places, without being able to fathom how you arrived there. And we find ourselves riding multiple melodic lines, seemingly detached from a common harmonic substrate, that converse, meet, and clash, revealing secret echoes and mysterious, implicit resonances.

Many things could be said about this album: about the masterful quartet with two double basses, about how Greg Cohen is now a splendid reality that can rival the Charlie Haden of historical recordings, about how the new addition Tony Falanga, coming from the classical and avant-garde world, with his incessant use of the bow provides the true glue of the entire musical framework (did someone say David Izenzon?). One could speak of how his son Denardo on drums, a figure not well tolerated by fans, is slowly approaching the stature of a true soloist.

One could talk about the compositions, the "start and stop" so dear to Ornette in "Jordan", the flamenco echoes in "Matador", the typically Colemanian lyricism of "Sleep Talking" and "Waiting For You", the magmatic energy erupted from the collision of the double basses, the usual "violin rape" here and there, with almost country-like movements.

Many more things could be said: but it is much better for the listener to discover this little treasure chest of wonders on their own.