ORNETTE COLEMAN
Skies of America
Columbia / Legacy
CK63568

Skies of America, first issued by Columbia in 1972, wasn’t Coleman’s first opportunity to record his compositions with classical symphony musicians: back in 1968, RCA issued The Music of Ornette Coleman (LSC2982, and reissued on CD several years ago) which included 3 compositions for string quartet and wind quintet. One of these pieces ("Forms and Sounds" for wind quintet) was subsequently re-recorded and released as one-half of Ornette Coleman In Europe – Volume 1 (Polydor / Freedom FLP40102). He also augmented his trio with a string quartet (Town Hall, 1962 ESP Disk 1006), and worked with composer / conductor Gunther Schuller (Jazz Abstractions Atlantic 1365). Skies of America was originally conceived as a work for Coleman’s regular quartet plus symphony orchestra. As Fate would have it, Coleman chose to work with conductor David Measham and the London Symphony Orchestra. John Litweiler’s thoughtful and generous (but not copious) liner notes for this CD reissue detail how Coleman’s original conception was cruelly derailed by labor restrictions imposed by the British musician’s union. Coleman is not the only genre-bashing, visionary American artist to encounter difficulties with the notoriously recalcitrant and reactionary British musicians union: Frank Zappa detailed his own very similar, and far more serious, travails extensively (and with great humor) in "The Real Frank Zappa Book." Like Zappa, Ornette was forced to work with British orchestral musicians, while his own musicians were excluded. To add insult to injury, several sections of the completed work were omitted to keep the resulting opus to vinyl LP length. Sadly, the missing sections were not restored for the CD reissue. In light of all these difficulties, Skies of America certainly doesn’t sound like a failed experiment though it threatens to become a bit tiresome until Coleman’s characteristic bluesy wail comes soaring, siren-like, over the strings on "The Artist In America." Fans of Ornette’s work will recognize many familiar themes, most of which are stated by thick masses of somewhat dissonant strings and brass. The music is densely organized, and charges from theme to theme with hardly a pause. A tympanist and a jazz-styled trap drummer are also prominent, and add an unexpectedly loose, jazzy turbulence to the music. At times it seems as if the drummers are fleeing the onslaught of massed strings, but in other places the drums patter away discursively underneath the motionless, eerily beautiful orchestrations. Though Litweiler seems dismissive of the uncredited drumkit player, I find his rather sparse and oddly stiff playing to be well-suited to the music. Interestingly, the tympani approximate the role of the acoustic bass in Coleman’s quartet. I am certainly not prepared to offer expert opinion on Skies of America, as classical music, though its overall impression strikes me in much the same way as does the music of iconoclasts such as Charles Ives and Arnold Schoenberg. As good as Skies of America is, it seems more an interesting sidelight to Coleman’s lengthy, varied and brilliant career. I cannot help but wish for a recording of its American premiere at the Newport In New York Jazz Festival with the Ornette Coleman Quartet.

Dave Wayne

Track Listing: 1. Skies of America; 2. Native Americans; 3. The Good Life; 4. Birthdays and Funerals; 5. Dreams; 6. Sounds of Sculpture; 7. Holiday for Heroes; 8. All of My Life; 9. Dancers; 10. The Soul Within Woman; 11. The Artist in America; 12. The New Anthem; 13. Place in Space; 14. Foreigner in a Free Land; 15. Silver Screen; 16. Poetry; 17. The Men Who Live in the White House; 18. Love Life; 19. The Military; 20. Jam Session; 21. Sunday in America

Personnel: Ornette Coleman, compositions, orchestrations, alto saxophone (Tracks 11, 14-18, 20); London Symphony Orchestra (David Measham, conductor), including an unidentified trap drummer