The performance [and much of this ‘composition’ is dependent upon performance] remains static - with little emotional climax. But it did - along with the work of Mingus - move closer to the idea of a ‘musical collective conversation’ and away from the primacy of the individual soloist…a demonstration that a long collective improvisation had potential for ‘unity of form’ in the new music.
Ornette, after this album, retreated into smaller musical associations. He returned in 1965 for an engagement at the Village Vanguard with bassist David Izenzon and drummer Charles Moffet - playing two more instruments: Violin and Trumpet. Here, the additional instrumental voices were handled in typical Ornette fashion…as ‘sound tools’ rather than the expected ‘traditional playing techniques’. His treatment of these instruments were as producers of sound, rhythms, and emotions - not the expected melodic roles normally occupied by either [though eventually the trumpet was utilized in its expected role]. Soon after, he took a two year ‘voluntary inner exile’ - not from the music but rather from the music business: “I don’t feel healthy about the performing world anymore at all. I think it’s an egotistical world; it’s about clothes and money, not about music. I’d like to get out of it, but I don’t have the financial situation to do so. I have come to enjoy writing music because you don’t have to have that performing image…I don’t want to be a puppet and be told what to do and what not to do…” [1966].
By the end of the ‘60’s, things grew quiet for Coleman. He presented concerts in his home on Prince Street in Manhattan but did record again in 1970 releasing ‘Ornette Live at Prince Street: Friends and Neighbors’. In 1971, his quartet appeared in Lisbon, Portugal - with Charlie Hayden arrested and released with the intercession of the American Cultural attache. This incident developed after Hayden dedicated his ‘Song for Che’ to the ‘Black people’s liberation movements of Mozambique, Angola, Guinea’.
Coleman’s compositions were not only in the jazz genre - his string quartet ‘Dedication to Poets and Writers’ was recorded in a 1962 Town Hall concert. A Woodwind Quintet ‘Sound and Form’ was recorded in 1965 at a concert in Croydon, England. He received the first Guggenheim Fellowship ever awarded for a jazz composition and the ‘Inventions of Symphonic Poems’ composed for that Fellowship debuted in 1967. ‘Sun Suite of San Francisco came in 1968 and he recorded his 21 movement ‘Skies of America’ in 1971. ‘Skies of American was recorded the next year under conductor Davic Measham with the London Symphony.
Ornette continued his musical journey going to Joujouka, Morocco in 1973 and working with Prime Time from the mid 70’s [a quintet in 1975, sextet in 1979, and then a septet]. He recorded ‘Of Human Feelings in 1979 and appeared on James ‘Blood’ Ulmer’s ‘Tales of Captain Black”.
I feel, what can best sum up Coleman’s view of music is a comment about his Joujouka trip - the music and the musicians: “And the thing that was so incredible is that they were playing instruments that wasn’t in Western notes, wasn’t no tempered notes, and yet they were playing in unison. It’s a human music. It’s about life conditions, not about losing your woman, and you know, baby will you please come back, and you know, I can’t live without you in bed. It’s not that. It’s a much deeper music. There is a music that has the quality to preserve life…The thing that was very beautiful about Joujouka and the same time very sad was that all the musicians have to survive is their music. I mean, they don’t have anything else but that.”