Ornette Coleman: My Memories of Him, 2—A Day at Brandeis University, 1985

In the previous essay (see the Index), I told you about the first time I met Ornette Coleman, when I was a student at the University of Rochester in the fall of 1970. Many years later, in early April, 1985, I received a phone call from a woman who was an administrator at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. I was living in a house about six miles from there in Belmont, Massachusetts with my first wife Gail. I was teaching jazz history courses and directing the jazz and classical bands at Tufts University, and had completed my Ph.D. at Brandeis in May 1983. While at Brandeis, I had founded their jazz big band in the fall of 1979. But within a few years, I had been promoted to a full-time position at Tufts and I could no longer direct the Brandeis band as well, so I gave that up in May 1984. (I was the first jazz teacher at both Tufts and Brandeis, and both big bands are still thriving.)

So, let’s get back to that phone call from Brandeis: Almost every year since 1957, in late April or early May, the University had given Creative Arts Awards to leading musicians, authors, and visual artists. These were very distinguished awards. Prior winners had included Aaron Copland, Gunther Schuller, Thornton Wilder, Vladimir Nabokov, Mark Rothko, Tennessee Williams, Martha Graham, Charlie Chaplin, Leonard Bernstein, John Cage, Katherine Ann Porter, and on and on. (The awards ended in 1993, but started up again in 2015.)

The woman explained to me that on Thursday, April 25, 1985, Ornette Coleman was one of the people who would receive an award. “It’s our policy,” she explained (I’m paraphrasing) “to have the awardees spend the day on campus, and to have someone in their field to be their host for the day. But we have no jazz faculty member to host Mr. Coleman, and of course you’ve been our jazz person in recent years. Are you free, and would you be willing, to host Mr. Coleman?” (And I vaguely recall that she may have offered me a small fee for the day.)

Of course I said yes. There was some planning to be done, because they wanted Ornette to conduct a workshop with some of the students. I contacted the new big band director—saxophonist, composer, and fellow Brandeis Ph.D. Ross Bauer—and we put together five students plus myself on alto sax (my second instrument throughout the 1980s). I’m pretty sure that Dave Kantor played drums, and there was a guitarist, a bassist, a trumpeter, and a tenor saxophonist who played on two of the three numbers. (If any of these people contacts me, I’ll add their names here.)

We got together and rehearsed two tunes from Ornette’s first album that used standard chord progressions, “Invisible” and “The Blessing.” I also taught them one of Ornette’s most catchy “free” themes, “European Echoes.”

The day came, and the first event was a luncheon around noon, in the campus’s Rose Art Museum:

As we walked up the steps to the entrance, I ran into one of the honorees, composer George Rochberg: Here he is on the left at the premiere of his Fifth Symphony in 1986, with conductor George Solti on the right:

We made eye contact, introduced ourselves, stood there quietly for a few seconds as other people passed us, and then he said “Don’t I know you?” I knew we hadn’t met, but I didn’t want to embarrass him, so I said. “Maybe so—probably so.” After another pause, we moved on. I learned later that his son Paul had died of a brain tumor 20 years earlier, and that that tragedy was one of the defining events in Rochberg’s life, one that he openly talked about. Paul would have about 6 years older than I was, but I couldn’t help thinking that, unconsciously, Rochberg was connecting me with Paul.

I checked in downstairs at the reception hall, which was set up with perhaps twenty round tables that seated about eight people each. Someone showed me to my seat, and there was an empty chair next to mine, reserved for Ornette. While we waited, I said hello to the people at the table. One or two of them were music faculty, who I knew. After a short wait, no more than ten minutes, someone led Ornette to the table and introduced me to him, saying “Lewis will be your host for the day.” Here’s what Ornette looked like at home in 1985:

Ornette’s first words to me were, “You’re a musician?” I said that I played piano and sax and was a teacher. He said, “Did you know that a whole step is the same as a perfect fifth?” He was so engaging that, without thinking, I immediately said “Okay, yes.” I instantly justified it in my mind by thinking, C to G is a perfect fifth; add one more fifth and you get D, which is a whole step from C. Then he said, “And a half-step is the same as a major third.” “Sure,” I said. This time I quickly thought, a stack of thirds (but not all major thirds) is C, E, G, B—and B to C is a half-step. Okay, I’m not saying that it makes perfect sense when I think about it now. But he was so nice that I intuitively wanted to agree with him.

The food was served, and soon the program began. As I recall, before each award, they had someone read a short paragraph about the artist. Somehow, I think Edward Albee was one of the speakers. I suppose he might have been the one who introduced fellow playwright (and actor) Wallace Shawn, who was getting an award. I don’t remember exactly who read the dedication for Ornette, but it was one of the music professors, possibly the late Martin Boykan. Then Ornette went up and got his award and briefly expressed his thanks. One of his witty comments got a laugh from the audience. It was something about how it’s better to get awards when you’re still alive.

After lunch, Ornette and I walked to the building where the workshop would be held. I had no idea whether anybody would come, but the place was packed. It was a kind of small outdoor courtyard, not a classroom, and there were maybe 100 students all around, sitting on the ground and wherever they could fit, as well as a few faculty members. The musicians that I had assembled were on a stage at one end, waiting for us. I think Ornette and I were about 10 minutes late. I got my alto sax ready and briefly introduced myself and the student musicians to the crowd, and then Ornette.

I recorded the workshop on a battery-operated Radio Shack cassette machine. The sound is so poor that I won’t torture you with much of it, but I’ll share a few excerpts. Here I am briefly introducing Ornette as “one of the great people of twentieth-century music”:

(After hearing these excerpts, if you know how to improve the sound, please let me know. THANK YOU.)

Ornette knew that he wouldn’t be performing, so we played the three tunes that we had prepared, while he listened. I don’t remember him commenting, except for saying something like “Thank you; very nice.” The students really did a great job and were very adventurous. Here we are playing the theme of “European Echoes”:

Then it was time for Ornette to teach something. By this time, I had seen other musicians show up to do workshops with no plan at all, and with no idea how to teach. For example, around 1982 the late trumpeter Art Farmer had quietly asked me, with my Tufts big band students waiting, “What should I do?” So I was prepared to lead Ornette through it, if needed.

But Ornette jumped right in with a brilliant and original idea: A way to get musicians to play “free jazz,” even if they had never tried it before. He limited the “freedom” by giving each musician an interval to work with. He said (I paraphrase), “Bass player, I want you to walk using only quarter notes. Drummer, play only with eighth notes.” That’s easy for the drum and bass, but it made sense to keep the rhythm section simple for this experiment. “Guitar player, only use whole steps. Trumpeter, please use fourths only. Tenor sax, use thirds. And Lewis, use only half-steps on your alto sax.” I counted off 4/4 at a tempo around 180 beats per minute—not realizing that if the drummer played eighth notes, that would be 360 for him!

The bassist and drummer began, and we took turns soloing. Here is a small sample: the end of the trumpet solo using fourths, and the beginning of my solo using half-steps, which I interpreted as meaning swirly chromatic lines:

After my solo, the exhausted drummer gave a cymbal crash, and we ended there.

Ornette said to the crowd that our set had been “a very good example” of what jazz is about—a nice compliment to us all. He spoke for a few minutes. Then, he generously and patiently took questions from the audience for about 20 minutes. It is almost impossible to understand my old audio tape, but I’ll give you the very beginning of it, in case one of you knows how to make this sound more clear. Here’s Ornette:

Afterward, he and I walked back to the art museum to end the afternoon. (A hotel and transportation were provided for him and the other guests, I assume.) It was a nice sunny day, and we chatted about all kinds of things. He was very candid, and told me there was a woman in Africa who was suing him for child support, claiming that he was the father of her baby. He said, “I’ve never even met her!” When it was time for goodbye, he gave me his address and phone number and said, as only he would, "Come by anytime – even if I'm not home"— !!

I didn’t take up his invitation to wait in his home when he was out! But during the next few years, Ornette and I crossed paths a number of times. Those stories are coming soon.

All the best,
Lewis