#harmolodics

[funkpunkandpunkfunk]

Ornette Coleman & Prime Time - Home Grown

[protoslacker]

Ornette Coleman: Intro To Harmolodics

Song X Records

Ornette Coleman: An Introduction to Harmolodics

In 1995 Ornette Coleman released Tone Dialing with his band Prime Time. It was the first album on his new worldwide label Harmolodic with Polygram. Ornette is always asked, “what is Harmolodics?” Harmolodics is the term he coined to describe his music and his philosophy of life. He decided to do a short film about Harmolodics. A few artists were in enlisted, including Lou Reed, Thurston Moore, Yoko Ono and dancer Wunmi Olaiya. The film only went out to journalists as part of the Tone Dialing press kit. This is the first time it is being released publicly in honor of the occasion of Ornette’s 90th birthday March 9, 2020.

[zeruch]

Sounds That Have Been Made, EP 120: Alfonia Tims & His Flying Tigers "Future Funk/Uncut!"

I had heard recently a 2010 interview with Melvin Gibbs (whose work I generally admire, and who as an interview subject, is always chock full of incisive observations and interesting stories about the NYC downtown scene) mentioned the name of someone I had never heard before somehow, the late guitarist Alfonia Tims. Of course as I go digging, I find a great tribute to him, but this actual release…

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

Sonic Youth - Old Greek Theatre, Melbourne, Australia, January 20, 1989

Daydream Nation — down under! The end of the 1980s saw Sonic Youth taking their new double LP masterpiece all over the world, from London to Leningrad, from Tokyo to Nijmeegen. But first, they rode the silver rocket to New Zealand and Australia for the first time.

What we've got here is a pretty rough audience tape, but don't let that discourage you. The lo-fi nature of the recording gives everything a pleasingly scuzzy edge, a sense of impending chaos, a teenage riot about to happen. It also makes me think: is Daydream Nation Sonic Youth's most metal album? Something about the way the band leans into some of the wicked riffs here feels kinda Slayer-ish. Maybe?

Then again, I can't imagine even the most insane death metal vocalist finding the intensity that Kim Gordon brings to "Eliminator Jr." on this particular evening in Melbourne. Yowza! Another highlight is the noise section of "Silver Rocket" — which is actually a little more quizzical and playful than other renditions of this song, moving into semi-harmolodic zones, if you can dig it. The whole show wraps up with some Aussie underground royalty guest stars — Rowland and Harry Howard (and perhaps Epic Soundtracks?) from These Immortal Souls join SY for a demonic "I Wanna Be Your Dog," everyone losing their hearts on the burning sands. Well, come on!

Bandcamp | Merch | Concert Chronology

[palilalia]

PAL-072 WATT LP

“Recorded in Miami 1989-1991”

BUY LP — tinyurl.com/59f39x2x "I was hanging out with Bill Orcutt at the 930 Club nearly 30 years ago, watching a famous post-rock band (who shall remain nameless, but whose moniker contained two- and-a-half times more articles and conjunctions than nouns) when he said: "This band is like my band in college -- all major 7th and 9h chords." I relate this to emphasize that in the case of Bill Orcutt and Harry Pussy, the seemingly untutored ooze of "Please Don't Come Back From the Moon" and "Girl With Frog" had its genesis in something far more Apollonian than is usually understood. It's debatable whether or not Watt, the duo of Orcutt and drummer Tim Koffley featured on Recorded in Miami, is the above- referenced grad-school band. Watt is not resplendent with jazz chords, but it's certainly more tutored, offering a mannered link between the contemporaneous Thunders-esque punk of Orcutt's Trash Monkeys and Harry Pussy's mayhem. The continuity with Harry Pussy is more than temporal -- Recorded in Miami is Orcutt’s first use of the four string guitar, and Harry Pussy claimed the same amp and drum kit. The resemblance more or less ends there. To further put Recorded in Miami -- made on Orcutt's Walkman, Rat Bastard's North Miami studio, and South Miami’s Natural Sound (total bill $289) -- into context, consider the fecundity of the underground music world as the '80s rolled into the '90s. It's hard to relate to those who missed it, but it was a time when post-hardcore hadn't quite given way to the bloat of grunge, when the Minutemen held sway (for the moment) over Led Zeppelin. The indie world was ruled by an ever-propagating compost heap of jagged guitar bands like TFUL282, Truman's Water, and (to crank it back a couple years) Phantom Tollbooth. And in some ways (although Orcutt swears Watt's prime influences were James Blood Ulmer and Fred Frith's Massacre), this record seems very much cut from that decade-ending cloth, seemingly only one vocal overdub away from a Homestead catalog number. Track after track (mostly titled after episodes of Art Clokey's slyly Buddhist TV masterwork, Gumby), Recorded in Miami's tracks spill over with right angles, rockist tropes, and verse/ chorus structures, from the Minutemen-oid funk of "Band Contest" to the stroked Moore-Ranaldoisms of "The Young and the Decoding." Yet Orcutt's fretboard-spanning angular melodic runs are right up front in the latter, and the final two tracks introduce a bit of the explosive chaos that would follow when Adris finally claimed the drum kit. Consider "Wattstock," where Koffley forms the bedrock for an extended Orcutt hotbox of instantly-composed harmolodics. Or "God Are You There, It's Me, Watt," where we can hear the spontaneous vocal bursts (the only vocals on the album) that would re-emerge on Orcutt's early solo records. Watt began to crumble when Koffley, as drummers will do, yearned for rhythmic grids of increasing complexity, while Orcutt instead wanted to "smoke more pot and improvise." For a few records with Harry Pussy, Orcutt would get his wish (though some of the structuralism of Watt would creep into later records). But we shouldn't regard Recorded in Miami as mere transitional scraps of juvenalia, or stunt-rock delivered for the mere thrill of pulling it off. Rather, it's an early, major piece of the unfolding and complex puzzle of Orcutt's music. A foundation. And without the earth beneath our feet, how can we ever reach the sky?" -- TOM CARTER 

[onetwofeb]

Ornette Coleman rehearsal, circa 1968. with David Izenson and Ed Blackwell. Recorded on Blackwell's top loading cassette player. Music + inter-band discussions on Harmolodics.

[projazznet]

Ornette Coleman's son and longtime drummer Denardo Coleman is still in his prime time—and keeping the heart of harmolodics beating.

[lboogie1906]

Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman (March 9, 1930 – June 11, 2015) was a jazz saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter, and composer known as a principal founder of the free jazz genre, a term derived from his 1960 album Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation. His pioneering performances often abandoned the chordal and harmony-based structure found in bebop, instead emphasizing a jarring and avant-garde approach to improvisation.

Born in Fort Worth, he began his musical career playing in local R&B and bebop groups and formed his group in Los Angeles featuring members such as Ed Blackwell, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins. In 1959, he released the controversial album The Shape of Jazz to Come and began a long residency at the Five Spot Jazz Club in New York City. His 1960 album Free Jazz would profoundly influence the direction of jazz in that decade. Beginning in the mid-1970s, he formed the group Prime Time and explored funk and his concept of Harmolodic music.

His “Broadway Blues” and “Lonely Woman” became genre standards and are cited as important early works in free jazz. His album Sound Grammar received the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Music. AllMusic called him “one of the most important (and controversial) innovators of the jazz avant-garde”.

He married poet Jayne Cortez (1954-1964). They had one son, Denardo. In September 2006 he released a live album titled Sound Grammar with his son and two bassists. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[theloniousbach]

Once Again Working on The Enigma off Ornette Coleman

February 28, 2024

By Kim Kleinman, Contributing Writer

When he invited me to this birthday party for Ornette Coleman, Fritz wrote, “…I’ve loved his music since I got the ears to hear it correctly, and now I’m convinced I’ve underestimated his brilliance and the sheer beauty of his music.”

“The ears to hear it correctly” captures my efforts too. I dutifully read Martin Williams as a new jazz fan in the late 1960s or early 1970s and saw that Ornette Coleman was not only NEW, but IMPORTANT. I think I snatched up the Atlantic Best of collection from the Columbia Record Club. It was new, important, but not really much fun. Still, it would come out for at least one side from time to time in those days of vinyl LPs as the soundtrack to underaged beer and the deep but tedious thoughts of young people trying to figure out the world. Like the world itself, this music was mysterious, challenging, and a little scary.

I kept returning to Coleman, though far more often than other avant-gardists, even late-era John Coltrane. There was brilliance and sheer beauty, plus a vulnerability that kept drawing me back. A.B. Spellman’s Four Jazz Lives showed Coleman to be shy and brave, thoughtful and enigmatic. Later I saw Shirley Clarke’s documentary “Ornette: Made In America,” which conveyed an overwhelming sense of loneliness. It was with that impression in mind that I walked into the green room after a 1981 concert with Prime Time when I began to get the ears to hear him correctly. Shy myself, I shook Coleman’s hand to say thanks, for that night and all the years before. It was easier to talk to bassist Jamaaldeen Tacuma, who asked what I played. We both heard me blurt, “Er, stereo.”

In 1981, over the two drums, two basses, and two guitars with the leader, I heard just how Ornette sang, not just on alto but on trumpet and violin. Somehow the lack of technical prowess on the latter instruments expressed that vocal element of his art. That’s what he’d been doing all along; I finally had the correct ears to hear him singing brilliantly and beautifully.

With that insight, I could go back to those early Atlantic albums and really hear them for the first time—the coherence and poignancy of the melodies, the rich interplay of the voices, the harmonies that are there even without a chordal instrument to frame them. The previously daunting “Free Jazz” had a logic and opportunities to triangulate Coleman’s music with the more familiar voices of Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy, and Scott LaFaro, a chance to hear how they played this music.

Coleman composed some wonderful tunes—my favorites are among the obvious ones: “Ramblin’,” “Una Muy Bonita,” “Peace,” “Lonely Woman.” Other musicians have covered these and a few other gems, but they aren’t really part of the canon. Still, the lead sheets of his that I’ve seen in fake books are straightforward, but his highly personal concept of “harmolodics” was not widely developed by others. He certainly contributed to the shape of jazz that came along in the 1960s with terse snarling lines and swoops of sound, but to parse out the Coleman from the Shepp, the Ayler, the Dolphy, the Coltrane, in an adventurous young saxophonist of today is difficult.

Yet his sound is distinctive and I do revisit it often enough. Usually it’s the Atlantic albums from the early 1960s, though I have a selection from the late-sixties Blue Note sides and I paid attention to his work with pianist Geri Allen in the mid 1990s.

As part of the Jazz Spectrum birthday bash for Ornette, I once again have listened to those favorite early albums this time around, including the one standard that Coleman covered, which is included in this week’s Song of the Week segment, “Embraceable You.” It’s a chance to test his approach with a recognizable point of reference. In the same vein, I also returned to his contribution to “Sonnymoon for Two” from Sonny Rollins’s September 2010, 80th birthday concert at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan, which is collected on Road Shows, Vol. 2. It is, in the end, not all that good. For one, it is way too long, though to be fair Coleman doesn’t start playing until the nine-minute mark. They solo only serially in two- or three-minute segments over the remaining 12 minutes with little direct interplay. They certainly listen to one another but the interaction is passive. Coleman does invoke the theme at least tangentially in one solo, but more revealing is the way his improvisatory approach rooted in melody and theme has an affinity to Rollins’s and yet is so different. They each hear those intersections and lean into them.

It doesn’t quite work, but I am glad I listened. Coleman’s music does work, brilliantly and with sheer beauty. I am glad I have listened to it again and again and again.

[juliansiegel]

Conducting

Julian studied Music at U.E.A. majoring in Saxophone and Clarinet. He also studied orchestral conducting directing the Student Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Choir including performances of the music of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Stravinsky and Milhaud. During his time at U.E.A. he attended the Canford Conducting Summer school studying with George Hurst and Adrian Leaper. 

Since leaving college he has focused on his first love the Tenor Saxophone and working as a Jazz improviser, band leader and composer, but interspersed with this he has also continued to conduct / MD various ensembles across a broad musical spectrum from Jazz to contemporary classical music  

In 2001 Julian directed the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and BBC Singers in a concert of the music of Oscar winning composer Stephen Warbeck as featured on the BBC TV programme 'Classic Challenge’, the music commemorated the Normandy landings in WW2 and the performance took place on board a cross channel ferry, the orchestra and choir performed to an audience of Normandy Veterans.

In 2010 Julian directed the BBC Big Band in the London Jazz Festival with guests Billy Jenkins and Iain Ballamy at the Purcell Room, Southbank Centre London  

In 2013 Julian conducted a performance of Brian Eno’s ‘Music for Airports’ at ‘Bold Tendencies’, Peckham Car Park as part of the London Contemporary Music Festival 2013. 

Julian has directed the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music Postgraduate Jazz Ensemble in concerts of 

- the Big Band music of UK Saxophonist and composer Stan Sulzmann,

-  he co-led a project of the music of Ornette Coleman ‘Harmolodic  Ensemble’ with ex - Loose Tubes Trumpeter Chris Batchelor, 

- directed a performance of the Trinity Laban Conservatoire Big Band playing the music of Jaco Pastorius featuring the in-demand bassist Laurence Cottle at London's Ronnie Scotts Jazz Club. 

In 2021 Julian directed the Royal Academy of Music Big Band in a performance of the Big Band music of UK Saxophonist and composer Jason Yarde. 

In October 2023 Julian conducted the BBC Big Band in a recording session for the forthcoming album with Jacqueline Dankworth and Charlie Wood at Livingston Studios in London

For all conducting enquiries please contact management at Julian Siegel dot com 

[dustedmagazine]

Philipp Schaufelberger, Pierre Favre — Decameron (Wide Ear)

Photo by Andreas Zihler

Decameron by Philipp Schaufelberger, Pierre Favre

Working together for more than 20 years, the duo of Philipp Schaufelberger (guitar) and Pierre Favre (drums, percussion) bring us their third release, Decameron. Recorded in concert from 2019 to 2020 in various locations in Switzerland, the LP offers another glimpse of the duo's very personal musical dialogue.

Born 1937 in Switzerland, Pierre Favre might be less known to listeners outside of Europe, but his activities have nonetheless left an indelible mark on various incarnations of free improvised music and jazz, over the years collaborating with the likes of Chet Baker, Irene Schweizer or Peter Kowald. With his 1970 LP "Drum Conversation," Favre staked his claim as one of an early coterie of drummers wanting to move the drum set away from its role as accompanist to that of a solo instrument. He later expanded this work in his drum ensembles, inviting the likes of Naná Vasconcelos and Paul Motian.

Favre brings this resolutely independent approach of a soloist to the concept of the duo, often regarded as the highest and most challenging form of improvisation. Loosely adapted from the Boccaccio's Decameron, chronicling a group of youths trading stories as they shelter from the Black Death in a villa outside of Florence, Schaufelberger and Favre's stories work best when each player veers slightly off in their own direction, listening with one ear — as it were — to the other while maintaining their own path through the music.

Schaufelberger's sound and improvising concept lie firmly rooted in the notions of jazz, as one might imagine it extrapolated in its most extended and advanced form taken from the tradition of The Great American Songbook. Having absolved stints with Kenny Wheeler, Dewey Redman, Michael Brecker and Barry Guy, Schaufelberger's approach on Decameron involves working through various harmonic, melodic or purely rhythmical motifs and setting these against Favre's kaleidoscope of phrasing and color.

In a distantly related sense, Ornette Coleman's harmolodics comes to mind, without Schaufelberger or Favre in any way nodding to Coleman's melodic or harmonic language. In its purest form, what we have on Decameron is harmony, melody and rhythm all on equal footing, sometimes converging to create something more like a free-swing environment than the notion of a band just playing a set.

This approach works best when it nearly sounds as if each player were ensconced in a separate room, though still remaining firmly connected to the other's playing by means of what at times on the LP sounds like pure telepathy. The first track on the LP, "Sirisco," offers a good example of this, with Favre literally playing his own melodic counterpoint to Schaufelberger's ever-shifting seismography of melodic inflections. In this sense, Favre's playing echoes back to Paul Motian's ability to create a space for the music while at times seeming to lie outside that very space, looking in from the outside and watching the music unfold. This creates at the best of moments on the LP a terrific sense of tension without it seeming as if the players were in any way trying to move the music to some sort of release or build-up. It's as if the music just is, a force of nature moving along at its own pace and cognition.

The duo's concept of music as an organic being might well be the unifying force of Favre and Schaufelberger's work together, their interaction on Decameron conjuring a sense of nature leaving its traces on our listening, taking root and blossoming in our perception of time and space.

Jason Kahn

[historybetweenthepages]

1992

2020

[zeruch]

Sounds that Have Been Made, EP 10: The Music Revelation Emsemble, featuring James "Blood" Ulmer & Pharaoh sanders, live in 2003

Sounds that Have Been Made, EP 10: The Music Revelation Emsemble, featuring James “Blood” Ulmer & Pharaoh sanders, live in 2003

In keeping with the recent Pharaoh Sanders motif (given his very recent passing) I keep finding things his stamp is on that I enjoy. The pairing of Pharaoh with harmolodics meets the earthen blues sounds of James “Blood” Ulmer is solidly smart. It’s edgy, free, yet still rooted in some dark southern gothic silt from the Delta. Spacey to the point of almost drenched in psychedelic tension, with…

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

Public Image Limited - Toad's Place, New Haven, Connecticut, April 4, 1983

Another farewell, this time to pioneering Public Image Limited guitarist Keith Levene. In 2022, it might be hard to fully appreciate how seismic his approach was back in the day — Levene's style has been absorbed fully by the underground (and perhaps the overground, for that matter). But he's still downright thrilling on those first few PiL records, perhaps not sui generis (because what really is?), but pretty damn close.

Simon Reynolds: PiL’s chemistry came from the merger of Lydon’s muezzin-meets-Celtic approach to expressionistic singing,  the usurpation by Jah Wobble’s bass of the primary melodic role, and Levene’s harmolodic-in-all-but-name guitarwork. Indeed, in homage to that famous exponent of Ornette Coleman’s theories, Levene calls his signature technique, “the James 'Blood' Ulmer Effect.” Basically, this involves the deliberate incorporation of mistakes. When Levene would hit a wrong note, he’d immediately repeat the error to see if the wrongness could become a new kind of rightness. “The idea was to break through conditioning, take yourself out of one channel, and into another space.”

For a nice rarity, here's a very nice Alex Butterfield Archives recording of PiL towards the end of Levene's run with the band. A confrontational show — maybe all of this band's shows were confrontational. But in between the gobbing, Levene, Lydon and co. kick up quite a dust cloud of musical synergies, a wild and inventive sound. Like Johnny sings at the end of "Swan Lake": "Words cannot express, words cannot express ..."

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[simonwest369]

What is the story behind this record? James Blood Ulmer with The Playgroup or Rip Rig & Panic? Mystery… #jamesbloodulmer #riprigandpanic #onusound #adriansherwood #seanoliver #brucesmith #roughtraderecords #harmolodics #dub (at London, United Kingdom) https://www.instagram.com/p/CQGb9fgA8Fu/?utm_medium=tumblr