MONTREAL – Last night, American jazz legend Ornette Coleman was awarded the highest jazz honor north of the border before playing a magnificent show with his quartet before a sold-out room at the Montreal Jazz Festival.
Coleman accepted the Miles Davis Award, named for the late jazz composer, bandleader and trumpeter from East St. Louis, onstage at Theatre Maisonneuve in Montreal’s sprawling arts center, Place des Artes.
Coleman is known for his cryptic, almost mystical remarks, as well as his music, which continues to blaze new trails in jazz 50 years into his career. Accepting the award, he said, “It is obvious sound is the most important thing.”
Sound was “the most important thing” when Ornette came back to the stage after accepting the award, accompanied by his quartet: a double bassist (Tony Falanga), an electric bassist (Al Mac Dowell) and a trapset drummer (Denardo Coleman, Ornette’s son), with a featured vocalist on one track.
Ornette Coleman could be taken as a standard-bearer for challenging, free jazz – indeed his 1960 album Free Jazz defined the genre. But his set last night at Festival International de Jazz de Montreal was tight, melodic, structured and ranged freely in feel, from modal jazz explorations to walking blues to spry funk to lyrical nuggets of classical music.
Though Ornette is the undisputed bandleader, and has the wind of a much younger man – he can still flat-out blow – this quartet is defined by the interplay of the two bassists, on amplified acoustic and electric. At times they played carefully sequenced and interlocked parts. At other times Mac Dowell crawled down the neck of his electric bass to play the brighter octave counterpart to Falanga’ acoustic bassline, sounding more like a six-string electric guitar than a bass. At other times they engaged in spirited call and response.
Their interplay provided an unforgettable setting for the melodic sweep and daring explorations of Ornette’s saxophone, with his side excursions on trumpet and even (a sweet surprise) violin. Ornette’s son Denardo Coleman kept it all grounded and moving with a continually imaginative but understated attack on the trapset.
“The hardest thing to conquer is love,” Ornette said when accepting his Miles Davis Award. The audience love for this man and his music – and the music itself, last night in Montreal – were indeed unconquerable.
The Montreal Jazz Festival continues through Sunday, with daily updates on stlamerican.com and follow-up feature coverage in the July 16 print edition of The St. Louis American.
