The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Celebrating Ornette Coleman - New York City Article

“Celebrating Ornette Coleman”
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, artistic director, Wynton Marsalis.
Rose Theater
Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall
Broadway at 60th Street, 5th Floor, (212) 721 6500
Friday May 18 and Saturday May 19

For years, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s majordomo, Wynton Marsalis, has been notoriously critical of much postmodern music, expressing the view that it departs too much from jazz’s fundamental virtues of swing and the blues. Yet for that very same reason, somewhat ironically, Mr. Marsalis has long trumpeted the glories of jazz’s first great postmodernist, the legendary Ornette Coleman. Coleman, who died three years ago at age 85, was originally infamous for how radical his innovations sounded at the moment when the world first heard him, at the height of the bebop era in 1960; yet today, the overall course of jazz in the last 70 years seems unimaginable without Ornette. The point that the JALC Orchestra most appreciates is that Coleman, unlike most of the “free jazz” players who followed, was more than an iconoclast and a musical maverick: he was foremostly one of jazz’s great composers, who had a knack for writing memorable and even catchy melodies, the kind of tunes that audiences remember and musicians want to play. We’ve long savored what Mr. Marsalis has done with Coleman’s classic “Ramblin,” now we’re looking forward to hear what such inspired arrangers as musical director Ted Nash, as well as Chris Crenshaw, Carlos Henriquez, Vincent Gardner, Ron Westray, and Mr. Marsalis himself can do with “Lonely Woman,” “Peace,” and “Una Muy Bonita.”

For info and tickets please click here