****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
... after writing three reviews in two days of CDs by jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman, trying to persuade lukewarm jazz fans and adventuresome Baroqueniks that "free jazz" is worth listening to, I've decided to range to the far side of the field, to sing the praises of saxophonist Jan Garbárek. If YOU, like myself, already appreciate both Coleman and Garbárek, you don't need to read this review; you already have the blessing of universal taste.Coleman is all energy; Garbárek is all beauty. Coleman, though he has worked with some great white musicians, is intensely focused on the African-American experience called jazz. His roots are in the slave and apartheid anger of black America, in the redemptive act of playing joyful music out of suffering. Garbárek is a Norwegian who built his jazz career first in America, a synthesizer of all musical traditions, who has included Middle Eastern, Medieval, folk, and modernist elements in most of his recordings. Ornette considers nasty, raspy, ugly sounds part of an expressive musical vocabulary. Jan doesn't; his palette is all moonlight and bird songs. Both men compose most of their own music, but if they traded scores and played each other's, they'd still sound entirely like themselves. The danger with Ornette is to hear only the frenzy and to miss the subtle harmonic/melodic logic of his playing. The danger with Garbárek is to hear only the dreaminess and to miss the artistry of tonal colors and polyrhythms. Partisans of Coleman will declare Garbárek's music shallow, pretty, almost pop. Partisans of Garbárek will label Coleman's music strident and chaotic. It's a wonder that both are identified as "jazz"!Twelve Moons is Garbárek at his dreamiest, and his dream is of the somber, haunted fjords of his own Norway. Other reviewers have remarked on the pictorial, atmospheric nature of this CD, and they're right; the cover art and the music match perfectly. Garbárek is a masterful technical player, on saxes of all sizes and on flute; if you know the instruments as a player, you'll hear him do things with his tone, over a huge tessitura, that you KNOW you couldn't do yourself. Don't fret and be envious! sit back and enjoy!Luckily for the purposes of this review, there are MP3 samples of most of Coleman's and Garbárek's CDs. Just listen to a few of them, and tell me if you think my comparison makes sense.
