Music

Ornette Coleman, 1930-2015

Ornette Coleman

By Geert Vandepoele (Ornette Coleman) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

We lost another of our musical heroes today. Orientate Coleman was deeply influential in the development and blossoming of jazz in the era-after bebop, where the music went in different, surprising and (for some) controversial directions. From the seemingly mathematic transformations of bop idioms in songs like Zig Zag to the driving funk of Jump Street from Of Human Feelings (a personal favorite of mine), his music and professional example were inspiring.

In addition to his composition and playing, he was an accomplished band leader, bringing together disparate performers to play complex music that remained rhythmically tight. There was the Ornette Coleman Quartet that cemented his reputation as an experimenter, and later his band Prime Time, which took on electronic elements and fusion idioms while retaining oblique rhythms and counterpoints.

I also find myself identifying the descriptions of him as soft-spoken and taking a deeply intellectual (perhaps bafflingly so) approach to describing music. Many jazz greats are sons and daughters of the South, and Ornate Coleman was no exception – but it is interesting to see him and others transcend that heritage to something of a different time and place, or perhaps no particular place at all. We should follow his example and keep jazz an alive, evolving, and often challenging music.

Amy X Neuburg: Jerry Hunt’s “Song Drapes”

Today we look at a recent performance by Amy X Neuburg at the Center for New Music featuring a new interpretation of Jerry Hunt’s “Song Drapes.” This project was part of commission Neuburg received from the Cultural Department of Cologne, Germany to reinterpret the piece, which was originally a collaboration between Hunt and the performance artist Karen Finley.

We at CatSynth are immersed in a world of unique and often odd artists. But Jerry Hunt stands out as exceptionally odd and enigmatic. The evening began with screenings of his video work that is rarely shown in public. Many of them featured the artist alone in a dark room with his strange homemade electronic controllers and bits of electronic sound.

Jerry Hunt

There were other departures among his videos, including one powerful piece featuring a close-up of Hunt reciting what seems like a stream of random but intense thoughts; and other where he takes the viewer on a tour of his home in Texas pointing out the behavior of local wildlife and a customized homebrew toilet. Both of these pieces seemed to portend his tragic death by suicide while suffering from cancer. But there were also humorous at times.

A similar mixture could be found in Neuburg’s live performance, which followed the screenings. “Song Drapes” includes Hunt’s original electronic background recordings and instructions to the performer to perform text of his or her own choosing with a live percussion rhythmic layer. The elements of electronics, percussion and voice were a perfect match for an “Amy X Neuburg treatment.”

Amy X Neuburg

The result was unmistakably her sound and style, filled with rhythmic hits, dramatic vocals and delightfully sardonic texts. Some were quite dark in keeping with the original work, but some of the best moments were the most quirky and humorous, including a tribute to Nebraska as the place one often flies over between frequent trips between California and New York (something which is part of my life as well), and her dance to a catchy rhythmic tune entitled “Little Legs”.

The performance lasted exactly one hour, but was engaging throughout. I am glad to have attended it. I do also hope to see more exposure for Jerry Hunt and his work. You can read more about him here. You can also find out more about Amy X Neuburg’s interpretation