I thought it was just me and some latent snobism on my part that made me find his drumming just a twitch “off” somehow during the first half of the show. However, he got better, or my mood changed–or what’s most likely, I just started to listen to him playing as he meant to be heard playing, instead of listening for Billy Higgins or Ed Blackwell to somehow channel themselves through him and make the past present. That ain’t the sound of surprise, now, is it? By the end I found him to be rather damn good, especially (as others here have noted) on the ballads. Count me in to that Denardo fan-club: as just another pseud learning to really listen instead of coming to the hall with the concert already in his head, I need a support group, I guess.

BTW, thanks, Carl, for the lovely matter here and every time I log in.

On Denardo - I can see exactly what you like, but that’s kinda what I don’t like about it. It’s too literal-linear to my tastes - I don’t really need the drummer to illustrate what the other musicians are doing. As I said, I think he more than capably serves the music, and your comments back that up in spades. I don’t mean to be too down on him - it would be too nitpicky. I’d still love to hear, say, Susie Ibarra in this band, but this ensemble was still wonderful.

(also let me apologize for my first post on this thread. it sounded snarkier than i intended, sorry about that carl. but i <3 Denardo, i really do. also apparently i need a blog comment editor. i promise not to use the phrase ‘the man’ any more today.)

Same goes for media attention: It’s difficult to come by, altho how the promoters managed NOT to get pieces in the weeklies (Dave M., why nothing in Eye?), I don’t quite understand, and certainly the coverage in the dailies was not given the highest profile. (I’d be curious to hear how Jazz FM treated the show too.)

I wish Ornette had sold out, too, but his niche is a marginal and shrinking one in a crowded entertainment market; that’s just the depressing truth. It’s bullshit to call Toronto audiences apathetic - if you’d been in that hall you wouldn’t say that - they’re just oversaturated with options, so not as impressed with an Event for an Event’s sake as audiences in a smaller centre would be.

I’m probably not going to go see Spoon tonight, even though I’d be happy to, because I have other stuff going on in my life and I can’t go to every show. If I lived in Victoria, I suspect I would be going to see Spoon.

also this denardo snobbery has got to stop. the man is a frigging genius. for one thing, take his playing on the ballads; the man’s style is in its own way as unique as ornette’s. he was playing these extremely fast rhythms without ever being intrusive, subtly accenting parts of the beat with the knack for call and response of a great bop drummer and the rhythmic conception of someone like andrew cyrille. i’ve only got one thing to say to the haters: listen to the end of his solo on the piece the played before the outro. the man ended his solo by playing the entire head on the kit. it’s hard enough to play ornithology on the kit, now try to do an ornette head. and he did, and they didn’t drop a beat. (in fact, he never dropped a beat, and neither did the rest of the band - they play together what, five times a year, and they were outrageously tight?) people need to stop judging his style on what they expect a free drummer to sound like, and start listening to how he sets up these sonic spaces that sound overly busy but in fact nearly every stroke is reacting to or anticipating something from one of the players. i am starting the Denardo Coleman fan club. (the t-shirt will be the cover from James Blood Ulmer’s Tales of Captain Black, aka the best album with the two Colemans, that i’ve ever heard anyway). the entry fee is five bucks, there are pencils by the door.

And John, I can’t answer the Mingus Presents Mingus example, because it is one of my favourite recordings in the world. It’s very notable to me to think of it as a response to Ornette; it makes sense of the development of their work respectively, and yet it expresses an incredible and quick sensitivity to what they were learning from one another that I only wish we could talk about in some musicians now.

I heard Ornette speak about 20 years ago. Extremely soft-spoken, very into his wild clothes, (a lot of?) which he designs; and obviously possessed of a stubbornness and/or courage to have accomplished what he has accomplished, in the face of extraordinary praise and equally extraordinary and more widespread vituperation at the beginning.

I love his music, but I don’t think he lives up to his ideal that “all voices are equal.” When he’s playing, he’s out in front, and he very rarely plays background, or “comps.” The Mingus-Dolphy-Richmond-Curson quartet of “Mingus Presents Mingus” achieves that vision more clearly, I think; but I’ve always felt (and maybe I read somewhere? - don’t remember) that Mingus made that album at least in part as a response to the challenge and inspiration of Coleman’s music.

Coleman — wow. He changed the way people thought about music in a deep and comprehensive way. And, like you said, he did it in the pursuit of his vision of musical truth and beauty, not chased by a hungry demon of “aesthetic history”; not “looking for something new,” but simply, complexly, superbly seeing it. At least, that’s how the music feels to me.