BLP 4224

Ornette Coleman - At The Golden Circle Stockholm - Volume 1

Released - 1966

Recording and Session Information

"Gyllene Cirkeln", Stockholm, Sweden, December 3, 1965
Ornette Coleman, alto sax, trumpet, violin; David Izenzon, bass; Charles Moffett, drums, glockenspiel; Frank Wolff, producer.

1693 tk.11 Dawn

"Gyllene Cirkeln", Stockholm, Sweden, afternoon set, December 4, 1965
Ornette Coleman, alto sax, trumpet, violin; David Izenzon, bass; Charles Moffett, drums, glockenspiel; Frank Wolff, producer.

1694 tk.14 European Echoes

"Gyllene Cirkeln", Stockholm, Sweden, evening set, December 4, 1965
Ornette Coleman, alto sax, trumpet, violin; David Izenzon, bass; Charles Moffett, drums, glockenspiel; Frank Wolff, producer.

1696 tk.27 Dee Dee
1698 tk.29 Faces And Places

Session Photos

Photos: © Francis Wolff/Mosaic Images 

https://www.mosaicrecordsimages.com/

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Faces and Places	Ornette Coleman	December 4 1965
European Echoes	Ornette Coleman	December 4 1965
Side Two
Dee Dee	Ornette Coleman	December 4 1965
Dawn	Ornette Coleman	December 3 1965

Liner Notes

Ornette Coleman’s trio, now and for the next two weeks at the Gyllene Cirkeln, is one of the great cultural events in Stockholm this fall. Rarely can such strong words be used about a jazz event, but perhaps they have never been as justified. It is beyond discussion that Ornette Coleman plays a central role in the new jazz. He belongs in the some class as John Coltrane, Elvin Jones, Eric Dolphy, Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry and perhaps a few more of the great innovators, but it is he who has become the symbol of the new jazz and he has given it a striking profile.

His music is very universal, not just because he is more than a jazz musician who improvises in a new way, as compared with earlier jazz musicians, or who ploys without piano accompaniment, or who plays the saxophone, trumpet and violin in an unusual manner. Ornette Coleman is important simply because he creates good music. To be able to create this — in this case good jazz music — it is necessary to ploy differently compared with pre-1965 as well as 1959, when Ornette Coleman appeared on the scene. The old musical language has become “worn” or “spent.” The bebop style is as impossible today as the spoken drama or tachism or the realistic novel.

But Ornette Coleman’s greatness is of course due to his perceiving this, starting a new style and influencing a lot of musicians positively and thus carrying jazz forward. But for him this renewal has absolutely not been a goal or an end in itself, only a condition to enable him to express himself fully and to create good music.

If we refrain from thinking of his technical and stylistic importance and simply listen when sitting at the Gyllene Cirkeln, it may become easier for us to understand why his music is universal and why it reaches beyond jazz. Ornette Coleman succeeds in expressing a vision or delivering a message with authority and o personal punch. This is perhaps an approximation of what is meant when referring to artistic greatness.

His emotional range is fairly limited and if it were not for the variety of his music, we would certainly consider it tedious. The content of his music is mostly pure beauty, a glittering, captivating, dizzying, sensual beauty. A couple of years ago nobody thought so, and everyone considered his music grotesque, filled with anguish and chaos.

Now it is almost incomprehensible that one could have held such on opinion, as incomprehensible as the fact that one could object to Willem de Kooning’s portraits of women or Samuel Beckett’s absurd plays. Thus Ornette Coleman has been able to change our entire concept of what is beautiful merely through the power of his personal vision. It is most beautiful when Coleman’s bass player, David Izenzon, plays string bass together with him. Then, it is almost hauntingly beautiful. To many, Izenzon will certainly be the great experience during this guest appearance and this is understandable. We know Coleman so well from numerous records even if the impression is strongly changed through hearing him personally. But Izenzon has the freshness of the newly discovered.

How come David Izenzon’s name has not been mentioned more often during all these years? Suddenly at the Cirkeln we discover something we always suspected was true — namely that Scott LoFaro and all the other great virtuosi were just virtuosi. lzenzon is a real innovator.

He is largely that, just by using the "old" technique and by playing string bass. A contrabass is undoubtedly built just for this purpose and the greatest possibilities lie there. The third man in the group stands somewhat in the shadow of the two greats. His name is Charles Moffett, who plays the drums and is probably the only one in today’s jazz world who could fit into Ornette Coleman’s trio.

Ornette Coleman’s trio at the Gyllene Cirkeln — it should be repeated — is a great cultural event. Everybody in Sweden’s music world, from pop musicians to serious composers, should hurry to the jazz club during the two weeks of this visit. Next Sunday, everything reverts bock to normal for jazz in Sweden.

—Ludvig Rasmusson

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

ORNETTE COLEMAN AT THE GOLDEN CIRCLE, VOLUME ONE

From the start of the first piece, “Faces and Places,” it is clear that this is an extraordinary CD. The sheer creativity of Ornette Coleman’s improvising here would be miraculous at any time in jazz history; moreover, even by his own high standards, he made some of the finest music of his recording career at the Golden Circle. This album was recorded in the midst of one of the most stimulating periods in Coleman’s career. At the beginning of 1965 he ended a two-year period of rest and recovery from the jazz wars by playing at New York’s Village Vanguard nightclub for most of January. In the spring he composed and played a soundtrack for the Conrad Rooks film Chappaqua; his creation, however, was not used in the movie — too beautiful, the producer allegedly said, it would have distracted viewers’ attention. And in August Coleman set out upon a European tour, his first ever, as well as the first extensive opportunity for his loyal longtime trio to perform publicly. The tour began with his famous self-produced concert, for which he composed all new music, in the London suburb of Croydon. It continued with appearances at continental festivals and clubs; in Paris, the trio created the soundtrack for the Living Theater’s film Who’s Crazy, for which Coleman composed more new music and also returned to some of his older songs. At the end of November, then, they came to Stockholm, Sweden for a two-week engagement at the city’s leading jazz club, the Golden Circle (Gyllene Cirkeln). Their nightly performances consisted mostly of even more new songs composed by Coleman, and this time Blue Note Records captured the trio at its creative peak.

There is an unusual air of elation, optimism, about this music. It came six years after he made his New York debut and the eruption of the great Coleman controversy; now, instead of angry arguments and frequent accusations, virtually unanimous praise followed his every move. Better yet, the audiences were enthusiastic about what was in several ways the most radical group he’d yet led. Earlier bassists and drummers had often introduced rhythmic contradictions into Coleman’s performances, but never went as far as Golden Circle partners David lzenzon and Charles Moffett. With brilliant technique and sound — Moffett’s snares and cymbals resound with overtones — the drummer was an eclectic who sometimes drastically changed his accompaniment style in mid-performance. And innovative virtuoso Izenzon, a devotee of pure bass sound, liked to play arco as well as pizzicato, bowing contrapuntal lines in microtones. Close listening and responding, the fundamental elements of Coleman’s harmolodics, unites this music; Izenzon, especially, exemplifies this. Hear for example the marvelous way the three juggle three- and four-beat meters in the alternate take of “European Echoes,” which at least begins as an oom-pah-pah waltz; hear, too, the bassist’s changes of accompaniment and counterpoint in the ballad “Dawn.” And yet the trio took more obvious liberties with rhythms on previous recordings from this tour. At the Croydon concert and in Who’s Crazy, some performances include occasional changes of tempo and direction. In several places during the alternate take of “Faces And Places” Izenzon and Moffett freely introduce rhythmic contradictions behind the alto solos. The difference this time is that Coleman’s mood is now so creative and exalted and sustained that he rejects his accompanists’ musical proposals. Here he weaves lines with phrases from the theme, there he spins fantastic developments from new motives, and then he plays hard-driving rhythmic figures that knock you off your feet. Along with his melodic creativity, the many potent, strictly rhythmic figures ¡n his solos make the original take of “Faces And Places” an exciting, kicking, whooping experience. These neo-riffs sound like deliberate choices. His style seemed to be changing with this trio, becoming more self-conscious as he stretched out in long solos, and some deliberate elements of his later style — like rising whole-step modulations (for Coleman’s free tonality wasn’t exactly atonal); dramatically accented, wide upward leaps; and the sequencing of phrases that in time became almost a reflex — also were frequent now. A good example of these stylistic aspects is “Dawn,” unique in that the theme and alto solo seem to quite deliberately avoid the resolutions of conventional ballads. Coleman sustains a serene mood almost to the end, when a fast tempo brings bright phrases, and the surprising conclusion is a hard, held tone. High spirits dominate the other selections. Where “European Echoes” was brief, edgy, mocking in Who’s Crazy, the two takes here are expansive. “Dee Dee” is another simple song, almost a nursery rhyme, with more superlative, theme-based Coleman improvising. Fast tempos brought out the best in him. These versions of “Faces And Places” (which starts out very fast) and “Dee Dee” speed as they go along, as if the trio was possessed by the joy of improvising. There’s a similarly fast, similarly wonderful bonus on this CD: “Doughnuts,” which was the final tune to be performed on the second day and is released here for the first time. The trio first recorded “Doughnuts” three months earlier at the Croydon concert; among the events in this newly discovered version is a section in an enormously swinging medium-up tempo. There is no similarity between this “Doughnuts” (plural) and the fine piece that these three recorded as “Doughnut” (singular) in their 1962 concert. Of course, along with all its other qualities, this is exciting music — the immediate excitement of Coleman’s rhythms and harmonies has always been an aspect of his improvising. Altogether, like Charlie Parker or Louis Armstrong in their most creative periods, Coleman's Stockholm music is complex, calling for a similar depth of emotional response from the listener. Like his fellow greats, Coleman’s music is also highly swinging, to move the body as well as the spirit. Blue Note recorded these performances at the end of the trio’s Golden Circle engagement and had issued two LPs by the time the musicians returned from their nine-month European tour; those LPs and an ESP Disk of the 1962 concert were the first Ornette Coleman albums to appear in years. What a pleasure to have them and the new performances on CD at last.

— John Litweiler, author of Ornette Coleman: A Harmolodic Life (Da Capo Books)

Blue Note Spotlight - December 2012

http://www.bluenote.com/spotlight/good-old-days-ornette-coleman-on-blue-note/

Alto saxophonist and conceptual/compositional innovator Ornette Coleman is best known for his work on Atlantic Records between 1959 and 1961, during which time he recorded classic albums like The Shape of Jazz to Come, This is Our Music, Change of the Century and Free Jazz, a record that gave an entire genre its name. But Coleman signed with Blue Note after leaving Atlantic, and the albums he made—two volumes of live material recorded At the “Golden Circle”, as well as the studio albums The Empty Foxhole, New York is Now!, Love Call, and the collaborative New and Old Gospel, with Jackie McLean—that were arguably even more exploratory, and surprising, than the discs that made his name.

Ornette’s tenure with Blue Note began at the end of 1965, when he recorded performances at the Gyllene Cirkeln (in English, Golden Circle) club in Stockholm, Sweden. His trio, which featured bassist David Izenzon and drummer Charles Moffett, had been together since 1962, but had only entered the recording studio once—for the album Chappaqua Suite, which found them accompanied by an orchestra, and joined on one track by Pharoah Sanders—so these live recordings were a major coming-out for the group, presenting entirely new compositions in a high-energy manner in front of an enthusiastic crowd.

The original Vol. 1 LP included four pieces, “Faces and Places,” “European Echoes,” “Dee Dee” and “Dawn,” while Vol. 2 offered “Snowflakes and Sunshine,” “Morning Song,” “The Riddle” and “Antiques.” Coleman’s soloing was as individualistic and melody-driven as it had been in his classic quartet, but he seemed more willing to throw the listener a bone from time to time, inserting boppish phrases into his otherwise stormy solos. Behind him, Izenzon and Moffett were as fierce a rhythm team as any player could ask for, the bassist in particular driving the music forward like a rocket sled on “Faces and Places,” while settling into a deep groove on other tracks. These albums also documented for the first time Coleman’s adoption of violin and trumpet on “Snowflakes and Sunshine,” a move which shocked many—even fellow musicians like Miles Davis, who sharply condemned him for having the temerity to adopt the second horn.

Ornette’s next Blue Note album, 1966’s The Empty Foxhole, shocked many jazz fans who thought they’d gotten used to him. It marked the return of bassist Charlie Haden from Coleman’s Atlantic records, but was also the debut of then-ten-year-old Denardo Coleman, on drums. Astonishingly, that turned out to be a brilliant idea. Denardo’s playing had much in common with free players like Sunny Murray and Milford Graves, who’d come up in the wake of his dad’s earlier innovations. He was capable of chopping time up in a “pulse” fashion as well as battering out solos and fills that complemented the bluesy rawness of Ornette’s horn playing. The bare-bones march tempo he establishes on the title track perfectly matches Ornette’s mournful trumpet, too. (His trumpet playing had improved substantially since the Golden Circle recordings.) The Empty Foxhole is one of Ornette Coleman’s least-heard albums, but it’s also one of the most in need of reassessment.

The following year, Ornette made one of his very rare appearances as a sideman, on fellow alto saxophonist Jackie McLean’s New and Old Gospel. McLean was already well acquainted with the avant-garde, having made several albums with trombonist Grachan Moncur III that took hard bop well beyond its comfort zone, but those expecting fiery sax-on-sax duels from this record will be, to coin a phrase, pleasantly disappointed, as Ornette sticks to trumpet on all three tracks. It all kicks off with the side-long medley “Lifeline,” consisting of four parts: “Offspring,” “Midway,” “Vernzone” and “The Inevitable End.” The band, which includes pianist Lamont Johnson, bassist Scott Holt and drummer Billy Higgins, tears up the turf as McLean and Coleman erupt in wild solos that indeed display an almost Pentecostal fervor at times. The second side offers two tracks, “Old Gospel” (which lives up to its title, thanks to Johnson’s pumping piano) and the ballad “Strange As It Seems.”

Coleman’s tenure on Blue Note came to an end with two more studio albums, both released in 1968—New York is Now! and Love Call. Each LP included tracks from a pair of sessions called on April 29 and May 7 of that year, featuring tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones. The interplay between the two saxophonists was fierce, and the rhythm section, borrowed from John Coltrane, combined powerhouse swing with an ineffable gravitas. This feeling of greater grounded-ness is what makes New York is Now! and Love Call unique among Coleman’s discography, whether on Blue Note or otherwise; the tempos aren’t much slower than on his other mid ’60s albums, but they feel somehow heavier here, Jones driving the beat as Garrison strums his bass like a massive guitar. The two albums don’t even seem to exist as separate entities—they feel like two halves of a whole, the compositions all sharing the ebullience and, in their slower moments, the deep feeling of the blues that have marked Ornette’s music since the 1950s. Coleman’s Blue Note albums were transitional records in the best possible sense, documenting his growth as a leader, an instrumentalist, and a musical thinker.

Blue Note Spotlight - June 2015

http://www.bluenote.com/spotlight/ornette-coleman-trio-at-the-golden-circle/

Primal subversion of the most delicious kind was in the air when alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman introduced his latest chapter of “the new jazz” in December 1965 at Stockholm’s Golden Circle (Gyllene Cirkeln) club. In tow was the trio he had been exploring new soundscapes with in the past year: virtuoso bassist David Izenzon, equally adept playing arco and pizzicato, and simpatico drummer Charles Moffett, shining with his textured cymbals and spanking rimshots.

At the Golden Circle on December 3 and 4, Blue Note recorded two live volumes of the threesome breaking new ground, marking the label’s first association with the iconoclastic saxophonist who had turned the jazz world upside down six years earlier with his debut 1959 album for Atlantic, The Shape of Jazz to Come. While that album and live performances on both coasts initially met with polar critiques ranging from genius to derision, Coleman, more than any other far-reaching, cutting-edge artist, proved to be the bellwether of the next evolutionary stage of jazz. Even though he was the epitome of the avant-garde then, today his renegade music of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s sounds remarkably modern—especially since a plethora of musicians over the years have taken his lead and play music today that is more in sync with what was once considered to be so scornfully radical.

Significantly, previous to his six-album Blue Note stint, Coleman had pulled a Sonny Rollins-type sabbatical from the jazz scene, a self-imposed exile from performing and recording, from December 1962 (after a self-produced concert at Town Hall in New York) to January 1965 (a triumphant return at the Village Vanguard where he added trumpet and violin to his instrumental arsenal). He reemerged refreshed and teeming with imagination.

On At the Golden Circle, Volume One, Ornette and Co. are in topdrawer form. Writing in the liner notes of the 2002 Blue Note RVG CD reissue of the album, John Litweiler, author of the book Ornette Coleman: A Harmolodic Life, calls the album “extraordinary,” adding that “the sheer creativity of Ornette Coleman’s improvising here would be miraculous at any time in jazz history; moreover, even by his own high standards, he made some of the finest music of his recording career at the Golden Circle.” Comprising four Coleman originals, Volume One opens with the emcee introducing the trio and Ornette shyly replying, “We’ve so enjoyed ourselves here and hope everyone else has also.” He then whips into the brisk dance “Faces and Places,” which features his ebullient alto whimsy. It’s an expansive song of joy, taken at bop speed, flowing with a bouncy lyricism and heightened by his high-pitched wails. Coleman’s improvisational enthusiasm continues on “European Echoes,” a track of simultaneous group improvisations that starts off as an off-kilter waltz. He toots the tune in a catchy—and unusual—calliope-like style.

Fast-paced, happy-go-lucky “Dee Dee” has a sometimes-it’s-there-and-sometimes-it’s-not angular swing that serves as an unsteady undergirding and features Coleman as melody maker par excellence (with stretches of bright dissonance and a few funny alto-fed false endings). The “ballad” of the session is “Dawn,” which is in pockets dreamy, emotional and anguished. Of special note is the interplay between Izenzon bowing his bass with both an edginess and a classical music-like beauty and Coleman in alto search mode joining him harmonically and conversationally after his solo.

Volume Two starts out sounding like a hoedown as Coleman rips open “Snowflakes & Sunshine” with his blazing fiddle, which quickly dips into dissonance as he scratches and squeals while Izenzon and Moffett jump into the frolic. Izenzon—who started to play the double bass at age 24, quickly became an avant favorite particularly with Coleman from 1961- 68 and then died at the age of 47 in 1979—hypercharges the affair with his bowed bass responding to Coleman’s violin. Then the leader introduces the trumpet, which he plays high-speed and flailing. He goes back and forth between the two instruments throughout the tune.

Coleman returns to the alto saxophone the rest of the set on the lyrical ballad “Morning Song” (his yearning voice joined by Izenzon’s deep-bowing discord), the fast and frenzied “The Riddle” (with noteworthy alto-drum interaction) and easy-going “Antiques” (with Coleman cruising with some of his best off-kilter lyricism).

Both volumes of At the Golden Circle demonstrate so brilliantly how elated Coleman instinctually expressed his music. There’s no froth here, no boasting, no artifice—but vital, heartfelt lyricism by a man on a mission to heed his own voice and as a result further distance himself from the status quo. To be one’s self, after all, is the embodiment of art. That was Ornette’s story throughout his life, but especially manifest in these astonishing concerts—a special snapshot capturing both his care and his impulse.