Ben Ratliff interviews living jazz legends from time to time, and last month was able to sit down with Ornette Coleman in a fascinating interview. You can read it here:
Mr. Coleman talks about ''music'' with care and accuracy, but about ''sound'' with love. He doesn't understand, he says, how listeners will ever properly understand the power of notes when they are bossed around by the common Western system of harmony and tuning.''I was once in Chicago, about 20-some years ago,'' Mr. Coleman said. ''A young man said, 'I'd like you to come by so I can play something for you.' I went down to his basement and he put on Josef Rosenblatt, and I started crying like a baby. The record he had was crying, singing and praying, all in the same breath. I said, wait a minute. You can't find those notes. Those are not 'notes.' They don't exist.''
He told a childhood story about his mother, who, he kept reminding me, was born on Christmas Day. After he received his first saxophone, he would go to her when he learned to play something by ear. ''I'd be saying: 'Listen to this! Listen to this!' '' he remembered. ''You know what she'd tell me? 'Junior, I know who you are. You don't have to tell me."
Great stuff! Read the entire interview of this most important jazz figure alive today.
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