“I just don’t play B-flat!”
By Fred.
There are endless conversations about how to navigate the changing media landscape, and it feels to me people are working way, way too hard to create a new conventional wisdom. Let’s leave out that any conventional wisdom is suspect, but really, let’s be a little looser.
I’ve learned some of my greatest lessons from the musicians I most admire, and this picture of saxophonist/composer/theorist Ornette Coleman with my friend, Yahoo’s Todd Kreiger, reminded me of an important one relating to navigation in a wild world.
Some background: Ornette burst on the music scene in 1959 playing jazz like it had never been played before. Some called it “free” or “avant-garde.” Many called it unlistenable junk. Ornette felt that tonality and chord changes didn’t need to be as rigid as had been the orthodoxy. (For those who’re interested, see Wikipedia for a little more.)
So anyway, another saxophonist/composer, Anthony Braxton, moved to New York for the first time and crashed with Ornette for several months in the 70s. Anthony’s a pretty exacting and careful guy, very anal. As he tells the story, after about six months he got the nerve up to ask whether he could try Ornette’s saxophone and was given the surprising go ahead (Braxton was very particular about his horn and was worried Ornette would feel the same). Anthony noticed the b-flat key was broken and was told it had been that way for a year. “Geez, how can you stand that?”
“Well, you know, I just don’t play B-flat!”
Thank you Ornette.
