Ornette Coleman + Charlie Haden: Still Something Else!

Ornette Coleman and Charlie Haden are an apposite pair. Yes, they have their differences, but the soft-spoken idealist and compulsive realist, the mock-innocent iconoclast and his staunch anchor, the urban spaceman and the committed politico share one of the firmest bonds in improvised music. Texas-born alto saxist, trumpeter and violinist Coleman - "I always tell everybody I'm a composer who performs" - and Cowboy Charlie, the purist upright bassist raised in his parents' hillybilly band, have worked closely for three decades. This season, together and alone, they're changing the shape of jazz to come in ways still unforeseen.

"I've finally pried Ornette away from Prime Time - it's taken me ten years," Haden grinned triumphantly, preparing for one of Coleman's most ambitious recent sessions in downtown Manhattan's Sorcerer Sound studio on a cold, clear Saturday in late February. Don Cherry sauntered by, holding Ornette's silver Shilke horn, rather than his own battered pocket trumpet, in his hands.

"Here I am, continuing my harmolodic studies," Cherry remarked with a hint of bemusement. Billy Higgins sat at the drums, wringing his sticks in a towel, as Haden continued, "I know Ornette's wanted to do something with us. When I hooked him up with Pat Metheny for Song X I knew it was just a matter of time before I got him back."

But reconvening his original New York quartet, Ornette hadn't forsaken his electrically amplified ensemble at all. His energy renewed as his son Denardo takes ever more responsibility for project production and management, this spring Ornette charged forth on several fronts at once. Double-reed specialist Joseph Celli, the Kronos String Quartet, and a handpicked chamber ensemble performed a two-night retrospective of Ornette's through-composed pieces at the refurbished Weill (nee Carnegie Recital) Hall in March. While Haden took his Liberation Music Orchestra to Cuba in April, Ornette travelled to Europe with Prime Time, the double trio comprising plugged-in bassists Jamaaladeen Tacuma and Albert McDowell, guitarists Bern Nix and Charlie Ellerbee, and drummers Calvin Weston and Denardo Coleman. As Caravan Of Dreams, the record label emanating from an avant garde arts centre in his home town of Fort Worth, released Coleman's string quartet Prime Design and his Prime Time set Opening The Caravan Of Dreams (along with albums by such of his associates as James "Blood" Ulmer and Ronald Shannon Jackson), Ornette was writing charts for vocalist Mari Okubo, and supervising revisions on his symphony "Skies Of America", to be conducted by Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra leader John Giordano in Verona in late June.

Ornette's spurt of activity commenced on the consecutive weekends during which his original quartet and Prime Time recorded multiple takes, all under four minutes long, of 16 of his new songs. "I think Ornette wants to get radio airplay," Haden shrugged while sound engineers determined levels for their live-in-the-studio date. "At first I asked him, 'You sure you want to sacrifice the music for that?'" As it turned out, Ornette sacrificed nothing but the entire day required to establish level for Prime Time, in which Denardo plays electronic drums that depend on computerized samples.