A day after witnessing Ornette Coleman’s sumptuous concert at UCLA’s Royce Hall, I am still taken aback but how gracefully this 77-year-old saxophonist performed so rigorously and with such intensity.
Nearly every moment of the 85-minute show found him performing, primarily on alto sax but also sawing away on the violin and using the trumpet for bullhorn blasts, never resting while his three bassists or drummer solo. Song after among was a group effort, tribute to him sticking to his guns and insisting the musical form he birthed  nearly 50 years ago continues to resonate artistically.
This was one of those concerts in which a review doesn’t seem to be enough. Rebel music delivered in a stately fashion by musicians comfortable in their harmolodic skin. They know where to start and stop; the rests after a handful of bars of music are plentiful and shocking. That several of the songs from his “Sound Grammar” sounded richer in Royce than on the recording only drove home the idea that this music continues to grow after it is set on tape. (A concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall in '04 yielded a similar response).
Sure Coleman was known as wild man in the 1960s, one of the guys the Jazz Police decided was out to ruin jazz as if he, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler and Sam Rivers had conspired to make nothing but noise. If the music had no validity it would not have been recorded, right? Not only was it recorded, it was issued by Atlantic  Records where he was a labelmate of Charles Mingus, John Coltrane and the Rascals.
His slowdown over the last two decades has often worried those who want to hear new recordings or hope that one of his rare appearances will occur in their town. He has a performance Oct. 28 in San Francisco and gigs in Croatia, Spain and Hong Kong next year; earlier this year he performed at the Bonnaroo Fetsival. He continues to compose.
Last year, the hoopla afforded his fine album “Sound Grammar” overshadowed the divine reissue of some early recordings issued by the fine Bay Area reissue label Water. That album of superb recordings from 1959 and ‘60, “To Whom Who Keeps a Record,” sounds “startling and fresh” according to NPR critic David Was. The band was his classic lineup: Don Cherry on trumpet, Charlie Haden on bass, and either Ed Blackwell or Billy Higgins on drums. One fabulous record store labels it essential.
The reissue only exists because Filippo Salvadori, a native of Naples who founded the Water label in the Bay Area, was a fan. Atlantic had issued the LP overseas in 1975, but never in the U.S..
Having struck up a relationship with Warner Music, which owns Atlantic, to reissue Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding albums on vinyl, he approached them to do the Coleman reissue.
“I was trying for that one for a long time,” he says. “Right now, it’s easier to sell ‘70s folksinger-songwriters but years ago it was different – a lot more jazz.. And that’s one of the things you have to take into consideration when you decide what to reissue – you can’t afford to make mistakes.”
By the time WEA gave the OK to the Coleman tapes it didn’t matter: The album was too important. Besides, there is always a thirst for Ornette Coleman recordings.
For the record, Coleman and his band performed the following songs at Royce Hall on Sept. 26, 2007:
Following the Sound / Sleep Talking / Jordan / 911 / Call to Duty / Turn Around / Out of Order / Bach / Those That Know Before It Happens / Taking the Cure / Dancing In Your Head / Song World / Song X / Lonely Woman