Freed Jazz: Bell One (Ornette Coleman)

Abstract On a recent Thursday morning, I visited the recording studio and rehearsal space Ornette Coleman has created in a building at 125th Street and Park. Fifteen mostly young musicians were coming to grips with Coleman’s “La Statue,” subtitled “The Country that Gave the FREEDOM Symbol to America.” Commissioned in 1989 for Bastille Day and performed several times in Europe by Ensemble Moderne, it will receive its American debut Thursday night, June 1, at the Battery Park kickoff to the New York Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival. On the same program, Coleman will perform in and present new work composed for the Global Expressions Project—with Charnett Moffett, Denardo Coleman, and Asian musicians, including Badal Roy—and the immortal trio with Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins. The last time Coleman presented a triptych in New York was four years ago at Lincoln Center and that was spread over as many nights. His erratic performing schedule over the past 40 years has had the benefit of keeping the ardor of his fans at a constant low flame. When a fix is in the offing, the flame erupts, and if the fix includes a reunion with Haden and Higgins, time stops. You will never get to see Oliver and Armstrong at Lincoln Gardens, or Ellington at the Cotton Club, or Parker and Gillespie on 52nd Street, or Brown and Roach in concert; Coleman, Haden, and Higgins, however, live and breathe. Did I mention that this concert is an Event? Michael Dorf must be praying everything will go off without a hitch, despite the broken toe Ornette recently suffered, in which case we can happily concede that he is a true showman—the Florenz Zeigfeld of jazz.