International Americana
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Charlie Haden’s career follows the reverse trajectory of a typical jazz modernist. The bassist started in the forefront of the avant-garde, spending most of his 20s and 30s working with Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and other with leaders of the New Thing. But once free jazz had made its point, he switched gears from music of the most radical sort to that of the most traditional sort, and his recent albums have focused on the great popular songs.
Among Mr. Haden’s many collaborations over the past 35 years, one of the most fruitful has been with Carla Bley, with whom he will be appearing this week at the Blue Note. A gifted pianist and composer whose former husband, the pianist Paul Bley, frequently worked with Mr. Haden and Mr. Coleman in the 1950s, Ms. Bley first joined forces with Mr. Haden in 1969, when they recorded a powerful protest album with the Liberation Music Orchestra. Ms. Bley’s original music for the LMO placed the new jazz of the 1960s in a larger, compositional context. Taking her cue from Charles Mingus, she melded big-band jazz with avant-garde elements and international sounds.
Most crucially, Mr. Haden and Ms. Bley were inspired by traditional Spanish music. The LMO’s sonic mix included Iberian-sounding guitars and a heavy use of shifting modalities that was suggestive of Spanish pentatonic music. And the Spanish inspiration was as much political and philosophical as it was musical: The LMO directly aligned itself with the ideals of the Spanish Civil War.
Mr. Haden and Ms. Bley have since worked with many different ensembles, but they periodically reconvene the Liberation ensemble when they feel that the prevailing political or musical currents call for it. Like most politically motivated jazz musicians, Mr. Haden and Ms. Bley veer toward the left; the LMO recorded its second album, “Ballad of the Fallen” (1982), during the Reagan years, and the third, “Dream Keeper” (1990), came during the first Bush administration.
Last year, they felt the need to express their ideological differences with the current administration. After touring with a new 12-member edition of the LMO in the summer of 2004, Ms. Bley and Mr. Haden recorded a new album, “Not in Our Name” (Verve), which has just been released.
The current project harks back to the LMO’s original ideas – blending postmodern jazz with traditional Spanish sounds – but this protest album is a vigorous celebration of everything that is good about America. The material, which is entirely orchestrated by Ms. Bley, includes only one original piece each from her (“Blue Anthem”) and Mr. Haden (“Not in Our Name”). The rest of the album is primarily drawn from traditional anthems and spirituals like “America the Beautiful,” “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” and “Amazing Grace.”
The album also includes one pop song, “This Is Not America,” credited to the unusual team of David Bowie and Pat Metheny. A variety of soloists take their turns on this instrumental, but the highlight is a free-jazz statement by tenor saxophonist Chris Cheek, who improvises over a reggae backdrop. There are also two classical works: “Goin’ Home,” the spiritual-derived largo movement from Anton Dvorak y ‘s “Symphony for the New World,” and an excerpt from Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.”
At the heart of “Not in Our Name” is a 17-minute track listed as “America the Beautiful (Medley).” The 120-year-old song has a rich history of transformation. Church organist Samuel Ward wrote it as a hymn in 1882; a dozen years later it became a patriotic song thanks to a new text by Katherine Lee Bates; and in 1968, Gary McFarland wrote a jazz treatment of the tune.
Ms. Bley and Mr. Haden open with a solemn treatment of Ward’s melody, then morph into a slow but jazzy treatment with an against-the-grain trumpet solo by Michael Rodriguez. This leads into the Negro spiritual “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” done in a straightforward, danceable rhythm with light syncopation and an expressive solo by Joe Daley on tuba. The track ends with an introverted drum solo by Mr. Wilson which takes us into the dirgelike theme from Ornette Coleman’s “Skies of America,” his 1972 “harmolodic” work for jazz quartet and symphony orchestra.
Mr. Haden and Ms. Bley may be playing “America the Beautiful” in a decidedly untraditional fashion, but they are not doing so ironically. By putting these classic works of Americana into a new, personal context, they underscore rather than undercut the values the songs express. The biggest surprise is that this music is as much a celebration as a protest: These songs continue to affirm what is best about this country, as Mr. Haden has put it, “an America worthy of the dreams of Martin Luther King and the majesty of the Statue of Liberty.”
Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra With Carla Bley will perform October 4, 5, 6 & 7 at Blue Note (131 W. 3rd Street, between McDougall Street and Sixth Avenue, 212-475-8592).