Obituary: Ornette Coleman

Ornette Coleman
12" x 16", oil on canvas paper, 2015

Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman died last month (June 11) in New York City. He was 85 years old. Coleman's legacy is an enormous discography and the concept of free jazz, which was also the title of one of his earlier recordings. I've made a number of Coleman paintings over the years, some belong to the best the archive has to offer. He is included again this year, established months before he died. NPR critic Kevin Whitehead reviewed Coleman's newest record (which turned out to be his last) New Vocabulary on February 10th this year. The album was recorded in 2009 with Jordan McClean and Amir Ziv and released on System Dialing Records in 2014. In the 2000s Coleman was not very active any more but this record sounds as fresh as his early 1960s recordings. The song in the top 100 is Baby Food, but likely others will follow as I've played many of his records (and YouTube videos) since. With the passing of Coleman the world has lost one of the most influential jazz musicians and one of the top 100 musicians in my 33 years of counting.

Pipa–Koto, 1-0

Ornette Coleman (2nd Version)
10.75" x 7.5"
acrylic on paper, 2010

This watercolor of Ornette Coleman will substitute the oil painting of him for the track Free Jazz  in the Top 100 2010 exhibition in March 2011 at Skylab. The original (see Free Jazz!, September 6) is not with me anymore. I didn't lose it, it didn't burn, it wasn't stolen. White Columns, the gallery that has been showing these paintings, sold it at the NADA art fair in Miami Beach this weekend. I was there to enjoy the sun, the beach, the food, and to promote these paintings. Coleman's was the first one to sell. Jazz musicians always sell the best, the first, and the most. I brought ten of this year's Top 100 paintings and returned with none. The other Coleman is gone too, the only two Jazz paintings so far. The ten paintings that were sold will be represented in the Top 100 2010 exhibition by either a color reproduction or, as in this case of Ornette Coleman, a second version.

In the beautiful week of art fairs and palm lined beaches, I didn't paint, didn't pay attention to any music, and didn't blog, leaving my schedule is in a state of disarray. The next two months must harvest forty more songs in order to arrive at a list of one hundred. I was thinking to help matters a bit by revisiting those musics just a point or two short from being in it. It's a good way of playing music, enjoyable, playful, and purposeful. To make it even more of a game I decided to play songs against each other: the winner being granted the chance to be in the Top 100, the loser back into the archives for maybe another chance next year. As with cup football the draws result in some interesting match-ups, Fela Kuti, a Top 100 veteran from 1988, just beat Alem Kebede (never before in the Top 100), Mishka Ziganoff (with Koilen) was the winner of a Bella Ciao play-off against Giovanni Daffini, and 'pipa' defeated 'koto'. The last of these was a match-up between arch rivals China and Japan. China represented by Chen Yin playing an ancient traditional Chinese melody on the pipa, while two of Japan's parallel string instrument, the koto, in a tune also of considerable antiquity, were played by Keiko Nosaka and Sachiko Miyamoto. An interesting detail surrounding the East Asian match is that both the long string instrument numbers (both the pipa and koto tunes are about 10 minutes in duration) are followed on their respective records by a short piece for a large bamboo flute. The Chinese flute is called 'dizi' while the Japanese equivalent is called 'shakuhachi'.
Misha Ziganoff, Fela Kuti, and Chen Yin, are the newest arrivals in the Top 100 2010.

Oogjes dicht en snaveltjes toe: Welterusten lieve kijkbuis kinderen.

Bella ciao!

Morning Star

 Ornette Coleman - Body Meta
Painting by Chief Z.K Oloruntoba
12" x 12", 1978

Ornette Coleman
16" x 11.5"
oil on wood, 2010

"Free Jazz!" I exclaimed a few weeks ago. Now with Voice Poetry there's a second Ornette Coleman track in the Top 100 and a new painting is already made. Voice Poetry comes from the LP Body Meta, it's not free jazz but with a prize tag of only a dollar it was pretty cheap. I saw an asking prize of $60 on line but that of course is for a mint condition copy. Mine is not—not many of my records are—I hardly buy anything new, and I hardly ever pay more than $5 for a copy. The art work on the cover of the 1978 LP on the Artistshouse label by Nigerian artist Chief Z.K. Oloruntoba is psychedelic in an curious way. It reminds me of the recent work by Cincinnati painter Mark Harris, co-exhibitor in the soon ending show of our work at Country Club Projects in Cincinnati. I'll send him a copy of it, soon. It's the last week of his show called Morning Star. Go check it out before it closes; or if it's too far away:
http://www.countryclubprojects.com/exhibitions/mark-harris-morning-star/index.html
The above painting of Ornette Coleman isn't anything like it. It reminds me of the work by Columbus' painter Curtis Goldstein, not in subject matter but in painting technique. Similar too is the use of polarized (or enhanced otherwise) source material. The difference here is that Goldstein takes his own photographs and enhances them too whereas I take an image from elsewhere (from the Volkskrant in this case) and without much ado paint what's seen in the original (which is a Getty image of Coleman in concert in 2009). In this painting I used wider brushes than I usually do and worked wet in wet. I cannot make myself stick to certain techniques, I just get bored with it. I don't even have a preference to a certain technique, I use whatever I fancy. Every painting contains a few technical inventions that, of course, I can never remember, let alone repeat.

Free Jazz!

Ornette Coleman
14.25" x 8"
oil on wood, 2010

I don't really consider Nina Simone a Jazz musician. It's the style she's most associated with but I file her under Popular, the broadest category in my wall of vinyl. No, Ornette Coleman is the first Jazz musician in the Top 100 2010. Coleman was the featured artist in residence at this year's North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands. I didn't go to it, but my best friend did, he goes every year, he's the one that turned me on to John Zorn last year, he's Wim. John Zorn was artist in residence at North Sea Jazz last year, three of his recordings were in the Top 100 2009, so how fitting is it to pay some extra attention to Ornette Coleman this year? I have six of his records/cds but not Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation. I really ought to get that some day. On vinyl with the original cover featuring a Jackson Pollock. The record gave a name to a whole new style of Jazz: Free Jazz. The record has only one track, it's called Free Jazz. I have Free Jazz–part 1, a quarter of the original LP, on a nice box set called Jazz: Opus Musicum, that contains many other Free Jazz greats, Anthony Braxton, Peter Brötzmann, Cecil Taylor, among others. So, with Jazz finally entering the list the question arises who will be the first Blues musician this year? More than half way into the year but not a sign of any Blues yet. What's going on? I don't consider Joseph Spence a Blues musician. I have him filed in yet another broad category that was given the nice acronym of ANABEL (Artists Not of American, British, or [Western] European Linage) by Ross Simonini of The Believer. Ornette Coleman was one of the first Western musicians to work together with ANABEL; he recorded with the Master Musicians of Jajouka. For one of Coleman's 2010 North Sea Jazz concerts he once again played with the Jajouka musicians, nearly forty years after the original collaboration in Morocco.